The Clay Soldier
by Temple Cloud
Summary: Twigleg wishes he wasn't the only homunculus left in the world - and his wishes may have been answered when he meets a strange clay creature who has run away from a master he found just as terrifying as Nettlebrand.
1. Chapter 1

Sunday 4th October 2015

I shouldn't be feeling despondent. I've escaped from the enemy who has made my life miserable for the past four hundred years, my new Master (though he doesn't want me to call him that) is the best friend I have ever had (well, apart from my brothers), and tomorrow I am going to school with him for the first time. I've got no reason to want anything more.

But I do. I can't help wondering whether I really am the only homunculus still alive. I don't even know whether to hope that I'm not, or that I am. If there are others, they are probably being intimidated and abused the way I was. But if not, it feels terribly lonely to be the last of my kind.

Or perhaps I won't be. Scientists today seem to be at least as curious as Renaissance alchemists about creating life, whether by cloning or genetically engineering existing animals and plants, or even trying to make amino acids from scratch in a test tube.

This morning, there was an article in the paper about the possibility of cloning woolly mammoths, and Professor Greenbloom was exclaiming about people who can find the money to try to recreate a species that evolved for a climate that no longer exists, but can't be bothered to protect the elephant species that are still alive. I found myself asking, 'Do – do you think scientists today would be able to create a homunculus?'

At once all four humans – and even Hob and Billy, two of the six brownies who share this house with us – were looking at me with such sympathy that I wished I'd kept quiet and let the Professor go on ranting about mammoths. My Master said, 'You're missing your brothers a lot, aren't you?'

'Yes,' I said. I climbed over the assorted spare sections of newspaper strewn across the kitchen table, to sit with my Master, snuggled into the crook of his arm. He is the only human I've told about how my brothers were killed. The Professor and Professora and Miss Guinevere are used to being part of a normal family, and I didn't really expect them to understand.

The Professora looked up from a manuscript of an article on 40,000-year-old Australian paintings which she was reviewing. 'I know you must be lonely, but I'm not sure if creating a new homunculus is the answer,' she said. 'Have you read…'

'Yes, I _have_ read _Frankenstein_ ,' I said indignantly. 'And as I recall it, the Creature's problem wasn't that he was an artificially created being, but that he was the only one of his kind. If Dr Frankenstein hadn't gone back on his promise to build a wife for him, they'd have gone away to South America and not caused any trouble to anyone!'

'That wasn't actually the book I had in mind,' said the Professora gently. 'I was thinking of the legend of Blodeuwedd, the woman who was made from flowers of oak, broom, and meadowsweet, to be someone's ideal wife – only for her to fall in love with someone else. Being created to be a companion to someone else would – well, put a lot of pressure on the companion to be perfect, to live up to expectations. Is it really fair to do that to someone?'

'Is it worse than being created to be a slave to a monster?' I retorted.

Everyone was quiet for a moment, and then Billy lifted his furry head from the bowl of milk and cornflakes he was lapping up. 'Aye, maybe it is worse,' he said. 'If someone's ill-treating you, you can run away from him with a clear conscience. But if you created a homunculus of your own, and you were nice to him – or her, even – well, they'd know they owed you their life, and they couldn't repay that debt. So if they wanted to leave, they'd never know how to ask. They'd never be free of you – not unless you die when young Ben does, and then maybe your little mate would feel guilty about having wanted to be free. Why you bother wasting space in that tiny skull by filling it with emotions like guilt and loyalty and so on – oh well, that's your problem!'

'As opposed to you filling your massive furry cranium with ploys to get the largest share of ice-cream?' I snapped. 'You brownies are all the same.' Admittedly, the household species seems to be more fixated on milk than forest brownies like Sorrel, who prefer mushrooms, but their priorities don't differ much – though I suppose Billy does think more rationally than most brownies.

'I don't think people of any species are "all the same,"' said the Professora. 'And that's why creating a new homunculus wouldn't be the same as having your brothers back. You can't replace people with someone new. It would be more like becoming a parent – and there's nothing unreasonable in wanting that, as long as you're able to help your children learn to be independent, and be willing to let them go their own way when they're ready. Do you think you could do that?'

'I don't know,' I admitted. I don't know how it's possible to learn to be a parent, when I've never even had parents. What must it be like, not just to be made in the image of a mammal, but to have actually been born a mammal, soft and helpless and needing your parents to feed you, clean you, and guess what your cries meant before you were old enough to utter articulate words? Admittedly, birds and mammals aren't the only creatures who care for their children. Scorpions carry their babies on their backs, and woodroaches, burying beetles, and earwigs regurgitate semi-digested food for their young. But if I have any subconscious parental instincts from whatever creature I was created from, they are so deeply buried that I'm not aware of them – not that knowing how to spin an egg-sack would be particularly useful to me now, anyway.

It was a frustrating conversation. It would almost have been easier if someone had made some really crass, tactless remark about how creating life was contrary to nature and 'playing God' and that no good would come of it, so that I could have retorted, 'And I suppose you wish I'd never been brought into existence either?' and spent the rest of the day sulking about the way nobody understood me. But the truth is that they do understand, and that being understood doesn't actually solve the problem.

My Master's friend Ivan came to visit today. I enjoyed spending time with him, discussing the eccentricities of Atticus the sixth-former with the dark green ponytail, and the long green coat, who always tries to stay out of the sun, on the rare days when it is sunny round here. Ivan is fairly sure that he wears coloured contact lenses, in which case his real eyes could be anything.

'So he could be hiding red eyes?' I asked. 'Do you – do you think he could be an enchanted being?' If so, he might be someone who understood how it felt to be centuries old, and ageless, and to have lost all the people you once loved. Or he might be someone like Nettlebrand, who had never loved anyone. I don't suppose the ravens did, either. I wonder what's become of them. Do they even realise that Nettlebrand no longer exists?

Professor Greenbloom, when we told him about our latest theory, looked sick with horror for a moment, and then collected himself. 'Well, if he _does_ have red eyes, that's not so bad,' he said.

'Compared to…?' asked Ivan, my Master, Miss Guinevere, and I, more or less in unison.

'Well, we've certainly seen that not all enchanted beings are bad,' said the Professor, smiling at me. 'The same goes for a lot of creatures who have a reputation as monsters – I've met some perfectly sweet-natured gorgons, for example. And if Atticus is some other kind of red-eyed creature, like a vampire – well, there are plenty of vampires who stay off human blood and are just trying to live as normal a life as they can. No, I'm more worried about – well, when I was Ben's age, there was someone who suddenly turned up at my school, and started following me around everywhere, until it got to the point where my parents had to move me away for my own safety.'

My Master considered this. The Professor was speaking in English, since Ivan was here, and my Master's English is still improving. I think he got the gist of what Professor Greenbloom was saying, but he had to pause a moment, take out the sentence that was forming in his head, and put the words together in an English order. 'So, mean you – do you mean – that if someone me follows – if someone follows me – I to the Rim of Heaven – I mean, that I should go to the Rim of Heaven?' He looked alarmed by the suggestion that he was being stalked – but also glad to have the excuse to go and live with Firedrake and the other dragons.

'I hope you won't need to,' said the Professor. 'All the same, would you feel terribly embarrassed if Vita walked to and from school with you and Guinevere until we've had a chance to meet Atticus? She doesn't have any lectures first thing in the morning, but she teaches a seminar on Thursday afternoon, so you might need to stay at the homework club until half past four. Would that be all right?'

My Master looked dubious. 'Look at it this way,' said Miss Guinevere. 'There are some kids at our school whose parents insist on driving them to school _every_ day, because they're convinced that they'll bunk off or get kidnapped or run over otherwise. At least our parents wouldn't do that unless there's a genuine reason. But – does it always have to be Mum?' she added to her father. 'Couldn't you take turns?'

'I just think your mother would be better at dealing with this one,' said the Professor.

'You mean she's a vampire hunter?' asked Ivan. 'What's she gonna do to Atticus? Spray holy water at him?'

'No, I think the best idea would be to invite him to dinner here, sometime fairly soon,' said the Professor. 'He sounds a very interesting person, and I'd like to meet him – I'd just prefer it if Vita was there as well.'

'But if he really is some kind of pervert…' began Ivan.

'If he's the sort of threat I'm thinking of, once he's met Vita, he won't come anywhere near any of us again. And if he isn't, I'd like to meet him.'

In the meantime, Ivan's father, Dr Newlands, and twin brother Josh were coming to join us for dinner (Ivan's younger brother, Joseph, was with a babysitter). The table was fairly crowded with seven humans sitting round it, even after I had hidden in my Master's pocket and all the brownies had decided either to go out for the evening, stay in the bedroom, or, in Lobber's case, curl up by the heater in the living-room, but stay in feline form and feline _size_ and not talk. All six of the brownies here are excellent shape-shifters, and can look just like ordinary domestic cats, but Lobber tends to default to roughly the size of a Siberian tiger.

After all these efforts to keep fantastic beings out of the way of Dr Newlands until we knew how he was going to react, however, he actually started the conversation with, 'Have you seen some of the news reports about sightings of weird creatures? There's been a spate of photos on the internet, all from different places, and mostly blurred ones taken from cellphones, but it looks as though a couple of big flying creatures, like giant bats, are heading west from Asia.'

'Are you still sure you don't believe in dragons?' said Professor Greenbloom, with a smile.

'No – I've been thinking a bit since our last conversation. I remember a few years ago, when my wife was alive, we took the kids to a National Park – we've got _real_ National Parks where I come from, not tame little things like Dartmoor or the New Forest, with farms and quaint little villages with thatched cottages. No, sir, these are vast expanses of wilderness where anything could be hiding out. Anyway, I remember seeing big clawprints – far too big to be a bear or a panther or anything like that…' (I wanted to stick my head out and explain that melanic leopards were found in the tropical rainforests of Malaya and Africa, not temperate forests in North America) 'and they didn't look like anything from a mammal anyway. And then I found a few blue scales lying around, as if some kind of giant reptile was shedding. So – let's just say, I've got an open mind. If we could capture one of these beasts, we could examine it at close quarters.'

'And what if there are dragons, and they don't want to be captured?' retorted Professor Greenbloom indignantly. 'Would _you_ want to be stuck in a cage?'

'If they exist, we need to conserve them, and we can't do that without studying them,' replied Dr Newlands. 'It might be best to try and breed them in captivity, where their young will be safe from predators. Sorry – have I said something wrong?'

'When I was a boy, I was sent away to somewhere to keep me safe,' said Professor Greenbloom. 'It was supposed to be for my own protection, but while I was there, I couldn't learn anything about the world, and I couldn't learn to be an adult. It was as though I was doomed to live the same day over and over, always staying a child, for the rest of my life. In the end, I decided I'd rather take my chances in the outside world, and I think that most wild creatures would make the same decision if we gave them the choice.'

They argued about it until everyone remembered that it was a school day tomorrow, and that all four twelve-year-olds (and one four-hundred-year-old) needed to get some sleep. I ought to have gone to bed hours ago, but my head felt so full that I needed to complete this diary entry first. Maybe I'll be able to sleep now.


	2. Chapter 2

Monday 5th October 2015

I couldn't sleep much last night, and by around 6am I stopped trying. I climbed down from my sleeping-table in the basement, hauled myself up the stairs to the ground floor, and climbed out through the brownie-flap to go for a walk down to the dying oak tree at the bottom of the garden. It all seems strangely empty now that my friend Toby and the rest of the Tree People have gone off in search of new trees to colonise. I hope they're all right. If the world can be a strange and frightening place when you're 20cm high, what must it be like to people 2mm high?

Today, though, the strange person who came shoving his way through the long grass, scattering the Grass People who make their homes in clusters of grass stalks bound together, was nearly as tall as I was. He looked much heavier, too – not because he was as broad-bodied as the dwarves in the mountains where I come from, but because his entire body was made out of clay.

His torso and his thick, cylindrical arms and legs were dressed in a shirt and trousers coloured in patches of green and brown, which apparently is what a soldier's uniform nowadays looks like. But his stubby arm-ends and leg-ends (there was nothing that could really be called hands or feet), and his round, almost featureless ball of a head, were bare and exposed to the wet grass. With every step he took, he left terracotta-red traces on the grass, as if his whole body was one open wound. He winced, but he ploughed on as if pain had ceased to matter to him.

I wondered whether he had originally had realistic hands and feet, and had squashed them into solid lumps or worn them down on his long walk. Probably he had never had them. He looked like the simplest possible clay doll that a child could have made, so featureless that it was really more an 'it' than a 'he' or 'she' – but still, I couldn't stop thinking of him as 'he'. His head didn't even have a smiley face drawn on it, only two holes indented in the front to represent eyes, and two more on the sides to represent ears.

No – not just _representing_ eyes and ears. The eye-holes glowed red. They weren't merely normal eyes that happened to be red, like mine, and they didn't look as if someone had added tiny red light-bulbs to a clay doll. It was more as though they were windows to a fire burning inside his head.

At any rate, he seemed to be able to see where he was going. If so, did the ear-holes mean that he could hear, too? Experimentally, I called, 'Good morning!' The clay man turned and looked at me. I waved. The clay figure stepped back nervously, and held up his arms, as if surrendering.

'Most honourable clay person,' I said, 'there is truly no need to be afraid. I mean you no harm, but I must admit that I'm excited to meet another homunculus, when I thought I was the last.'

The clay man shook his head so violently that I was afraid it might fall off.

'Are there more like you?' I asked.

The clay man put an arm-end over his eyes. It stuck to his face. When he had wrenched it away, shuddering with pain as he did so, the clay that had torn away from his arm almost obscured one eye. Of course, he had no fingers to rub his eyes with, nor eyelids to stretch, but he contorted his face until that fiery hole shone as round and bright as the other.

He seemed very frightened, though still trying to be brave. I could hear his heart pounding. I didn't know how a clay doll could have a heart, but it sounded about the size and speed of the heart of a mouse, and he smelled strongly of house-mouse. Of course! You can create a homunculus only by taking the life-force from something else, and, where my creator had made us from invertebrates, this homunculus had obviously been made from a mouse. Apart from the mouse-smell, he smelled – well, not like any clay I had ever smelled, but like a mixture of gypsum, Vaseline, and sheep's wool. I didn't know what he could be made of if not clay, but he didn't seem to have hardened or dried out. Perhaps this was part of the magic that had made him.

Finally, he reached a decision. He picked up a twig from under the tree, which he could do only by stabbing it deep into his arm-end. Then, he tried to use the tip of the twig to draw on his face. After a few clumsy attempts, he stomped forward towards me, pointed the twig at my mouth, and then, with his free arm, pointed at himself.

Hoping I had guessed correctly what he meant, I pulled the twig out of his arm and pressed the wound closed (hoping also that the fragments of bark trapped inside wouldn't fester). I felt sick at what I was doing. I'm horribly squeamish. Last month, Bryony, one of the fairies who live here, had been attacked by an owl, and I had dressed her wound, but that made me feel ill too. I wished my brother Mizell was still alive. He was the only one of us who was truly interested in medicine, and used to spend hours studying the laboratory notes of the alchemist who created us. If Mizell had been human, he would definitely have been a doctor.

Well, he wasn't here, and I was. I took the stick and drew the line of a smile on the clay man. He shook his head, held his arms so close together that they almost touched, and then spread them wide apart. He wanted a mouth that opened.

I thrust the stick into his face, stabbing a hole, and then waggled the stick to and fro to enlarge it. When I withdrew my stick, the clay man stretched his round gap of a mouth into the broadest smile he could manage without closing it (just in case he could never open it again).

'Ank oo,' he said. 'Ank oo eghy ngukch.'

'You're welcome,' I said. 'Would you like to come with me? If you're running away from a cruel master, I did the same myself, and I'm sure that my friends will look after you and protect you, just as they have me.'

The clay man nodded, and stomped forward, stopping when he caught sight of his reflection in a jam-jar lid lying on the path. I had read stories where ugly people, such as Frankenstein's Monster, were terrified when they first caught sight of their own reflection, but this person didn't seem surprised. Of course, if he was one of many brothers, he must have had a fair idea of what he looked like. He only shook his head sadly, then brightened.

'Kang oo shkulk gee?' he asked. 'I glike gy gou – _ngy ngouch_ ,' he corrected himself, trying to speak as clearly as possible. 'Kang you gich ngee a ngoazh? Ee-yah? Hang ang geek? _Kleazhe?_ '

'I can do my best,' I said. I'm not a sculptor any more than I'm a surgeon, but thinking of the task as sculpture made it slightly less daunting.

'Ang kake gish och!' added the clay man angrily, gesturing to his jacket. 'Ugicorng! I'ng gok a sholgier! I'ng a gezherker!'

'Understood,' I said soothingly – though I couldn't tell for sure whether he was describing himself as a deserter or a beserker. Either way, he clearly hated his uniform, and hated being forced to be a toy soldier.

Suddenly, he gave a scream of terror. 'Ook ouk! Ik'sh a _goy!_ '

He turned to run away, toppled over and put out his arms just in time to avoid falling on his newly-made face. The impact left his arms noticeably shorter and thicker, with bits of gravel sticking in the ends.

'It's all right,' I said. 'This is my…' – I could see it wasn't a good idea to use the word 'master' to someone whose experiences had all been of tyranny and abuse, as mine had once been – 'my friend. Ben. He won't hurt you.'

'Naturally will I not!' said my Master, speaking English as I had done (the clay man's speech was hard to make out, but it sounded more like an attempt at English than anything else). He knelt down (but carefully, in case there were any Grass People on the path) to get a better look at the new arrival. 'I have never – seen you before. Where – do you come from?'

The clay man said something I couldn't make out, which sounded like, 'Gish keyeging hoang, ing wayah. Shek-kenger gurg, ngingekeeng gorky.'

'He's the first homunculus I've met in three hundred and forty-eight years,' I said. 'He hasn't told me much about his life yet, but I'd guess that he's running away from a cruel master. I don't _think_ he's going to put you in as much danger as I did,' I added. I certainly didn't feel ready to tell my new friend about my past just yet.

'But he is a homunculus? Like you? Looked – did you look like that, when you younger were?'

'Certainly not!' I snapped, before realising that this was, in fact, a reasonable enough question. 'Clearly, this one is made rather differently from me – he seems to have been created using a mixture of homunculus technology and golem technology, in fact. As you can see, he's modelled out of clay, like a golem, but his activating principle is the life-force of an animal – a mouse, I think – rather than sacred writing on his forehead.'

'Hello. Don't be frightened. Want – do you want to come with us?' said my Master. He held out a hand invitingly, palm upwards on the ground, so that the clay man could climb onto it if he wished.

'It's not a good idea to touch him,' I said. 'He's made of raw clay, not baked, and it's very sensitive. Perhaps if you fetched a tin tray for him to climb onto, he might let us carry him to the house. After all, wherever he's come from, he's had a long journey and he must be tired.'

My Master went to the house while I stayed to try to reassure my new friend. I introduced myself, and asked him his name. He was frustrated at being unable to pronounce it more nearly than 'ngoush', but when he resorted to emitting high-pitched 'Eeek! Eeek!' noises, it was easy enough to decode.

'I'm pleased to meet you, Mouse,' I said. 'To be honest, my original name was Fliegenbein – fly-leg – because I was created from some kind of insect. Twigleg is just the name I use in England.'

This seemed to worry Mouse more than reassure him. 'Hliegengein?' he repeated suspiciously. 'Izhng'k gak a Gherngang ngaing?'

'I suppose it is,' I said. I didn't think that there had been a single country called 'Germany' when I was created, and I wasn't sure whether the region I came from was part of it anyway, but it seemed a near enough description.

'Ang yaw _hriengg_ ' – Mouse's voice was heavy with sarcasm, perhaps at the idea that a human could ever be a true friend – 'he'sh a Ghernang koo, ishn'k he?'

'Yes, he is. We only moved here a couple of months ago.'

'A gnakshi shky? Aw a hrekughee? Izh hee Gewish?'

'I don't know.' If my Master had any religious beliefs, they were probably nearer Buddhism than any of the Abrahamic faiths, but perhaps we weren't so different from refugees. 'He's just a boy,' I said. 'He doesn't have any parents, so a kind man we met on our travels offered to let us come and live with him. You can meet him, soon, if you come with us. You'll like him. I don't think any of them are _gnakshi_ , but I'm not sure what that is.'

'Ey gong ush. Eghery ngike. Huh goy who gnaig ngee – he wonksh sholger koo krokek hing, ing ger waugh. Gak'sh why he gakesh ush.'

'A boy wants you to protect him in a war? Against grown men?'

'I gink sho. He won'k shay. Angyway, I gon'k wonk koo hike. I'h hrung away.'

'I don't blame you,' I said. 'Well, there isn't a war on here, and you're welcome to stay for as long as you like.'

By now, my Master had returned with a baking-tray. Mouse looked at it in horror. 'He'gh going koo _cook_ ngee!' he wailed. 'Gush llike ghee ugher goy!'

'No, no, I promise he won't. He isn't like the boy who made you. This is just to carry you back to the house, because it's a long way to walk.' I stepped into the tray, and Mouse hesitantly did the same. I felt curious, perhaps too much so to be tactful. 'If clay men like you get baked, do they go stiff and rigid?' I asked.

' _Ngo!_ Ghey gurshk inkoo _hlaing!_ '

'Into flames?' Whatever Mouse was made of didn't sound like any clay I had ever encountered, if it was flammable. 'We won't let anything like that happen to you, I promise.'

My Master was quiet as he carried us back to the house, but when he had set us down on the coffee table in the living-room, as the kitchen table was much too crowded with people having breakfast, he held out his hand for me to climb up his arm. 'Twigleg,' he said, still speaking English so as not to exclude our guest, 'want you to school – do you want to come to school with me today, or do you want to stay here?'

'I'd love to come with you,' I said. 'But I think I'm going to be too busy.'


	3. Chapter 3

Monday 5th October 2015 continued

So, for the rest of the day I've been down here in the basement with Mouse. First, though, I had to ask help from the humans.

'Do you have some kind of soft, non-porous material that I could use as bandages for Mouse?' I asked, after introducing him to everyone. (He doesn't seem to be frightened of girls or adult humans, or even brownies, only boys.) 'I don't want his clay to dry out.'

'I don't think it will,' said Professora Greenbloom (who would probably like me to get used to calling her Vita, but – well, it just doesn't seem right to call humans by their first names). 'He's made of plasticine – that's a sort of clay that doesn't go hard. But yes, we've got some cling-film you're welcome to use. It's a good way to protect his body parts from sticking to each other.'

'We really shouldn't be using all these single-use plastics,' said the Professor. 'They're piling up in landfill sites – or decomposing in the sea or poisoning animals.'

'Understood, but at the moment we do have some cling-film, and if Mouse has a use for it, he's welcome to it,' said his wife firmly. 'So, please can you help Twigleg get everything together? I'm supposed to be accompanying Ben and Guinevere to school in a few minutes, after all.'

I thought Mouse might feel more at home in the basement, where it's darker and mostly undisturbed, and where we could set the baking-tray he rode in down on the floor. Now that he is confident that nobody is trying to bake him, he has become quite fond of the tray, as it's clean, without fragments of grit that could stick to him. All the same, in case he does decide to step outside, I think he's safer on the floor than on my sleeping-table, where there is a horrible risk of being squashed if he fell off the edge.

His first priority was to take his hated uniform off. I could see that trying to pull it off intact could easily wrench off his arms and legs, but I managed to snip the seams with a pair of nail-scissors and then peel off the individual sections of cloth. He winced where the cloth had stuck to his surface – it was too raw to be called skin – and fragments of plasticine pulled away with it.

When I'd removed all his clothing, I cut sheets of cling-film to wrap around his arms, legs, and torso, and patted them into place. Mouse ran one heavy, stubby arm-end along the other experimentally, then patted his legs and stomach with both of them.

'Ik guzhn'k hurk!' he exclaimed delightedly. 'I'h gok _shking!_ Kuksh ngee!'

I put my arms around him, trying not to squeeze too tightly (even with its new plastic skin, his body was boneless and all too easily squashed), but wanting him to experience the reassurance of non-painful physical contact for the first time in his life. I hadn't been careful enough, as my hands left faint prints on his back, but he flexed his plasticine body as if it held real muscles, and the indentations grew shallower. He squeezed his legs together, crossed them, and then uncrossed them and held them wide apart. 'Gey gon'k shkick kogegger!' he pronounced jubilantly. 'Crocker shking!'

After this operation, he lay down to sleep, and I climbed up to my table and wrote the earlier part of today's journal. Then I fell asleep, too, until I was woken by a plaintive voice calling, 'Cligleg? Wheh ah you?'

I climbed down to floor level to reassure Mouse. He seemed frightened, as if he had woken from a bad dream, but he wouldn't say what it was. One side of his head was dented where he had banged it against the side of the tray, so I smoothed it back into shape. I talked to him until he went back to sleep. I wish I knew more about his past, but he doesn't want to talk about it – or maybe talking about anything is just too tiring for him. So, instead, I told him about myself: how an alchemist had created a monster to hunt dragons, and created me and my eleven brothers…

That caught his attention. 'Gruzherzh? Gig gey kick you? Kunksh you?'

'No, of course not!' I said. 'We were friends. They were the only real friends I had, until I met my – the boy upstairs.'

'Hrengg?' repeated Mouse, puzzled. 'Whak izh a _hrengg_?'

'Someone you love, and who loves you,' I said. 'Someone who'll be with you when you're sad or afraid, and laugh with you when you're happy. Someone who makes your life an actual life that's worth living, and not just an existence to be endured because you're frightened of dying. Someone you care about so much that you're willing to face up to the most terrifying enemy to protect him, and you know he'd do the same for you. Didn't you have friends like that, where you came from?'

'Ngo,' said Mouse mournfully. 'We hag koo hike eek uzher. Igh shungwung hrang away, ger goy ngaig ger hreshk ogh ush kiw hing. We hag koo kare gezherkerzh koo keeshezh.'

' _WHAT_? You were forced to kill your own _brothers_?' I don't think I have ever been angrier about anything in my whole life – not even about Nettlebrand planning to kill Ben, nor about the atrocities the Tree People inflicted on each other. How _DARE_ this boy who had created the clay soldiers force them to fight each other and tear each other to pieces?

'I gig-unk goo ik,' said Mouse (defensively? Or guiltily? I couldn't be sure.) 'Guk I wazh ahraig koo shkok gee uzherzh. I shkoog gak unkil gey wuh akacking shungwung elsh, ang _geng_ I hrang away.'

So if Mouse personally hadn't taken part in murdering his clay brothers, he had still needed to hang back and let them attack some other poor would-be deserter, to create enough of a diversion for his own escape. Did he feel guilty about that?

Did I feel guilty, if it came to that? The day when Nettlebrand decided to eat us – at first I told myself that even Nettlebrand couldn't be stupid enough to want to kill his own attendants, that he was just gulping us into the travelling-compartment in his insides because he wanted to take us with us next time he went hunting. Then I saw Scorpio cradling Cranefly's severed head – and Nettlebrand pouncing on Scorpio and crunching him in half – and then Mizell shouted, ' _HIDE!_ ' and everyone who was left tried to run off in different directions, but Nettlebrand (who was a lot younger and fitter in those days) whirled about to gulp them all down. I was so panic-stricken that I couldn't move at all. Mizell yelled over his shoulder, 'Climb on his back-spines!' which would have been good advice if my hands hadn't been shaking too badly to climb at all. I fainted, and when I came to, everyone else was dead. At least, as far as I know they were. Mizell _might_ have survived – he was always tough and good at getting out of a tight spot, which was why he was also known as Flea – but I know it's not very likely.

Still, the next few times Nettlebrand swallowed me, I forced myself to keep my eyes open and look down into the pool of stomach acid where the bodies of my brothers were dissolving. I could definitely only see ten skulls down there, not eleven. Nettlebrand was part cyborg, and the part of him with a golden casket round his heart was a chilly, solidly mechanical seat, but what lay below it smelt animally acidic, and foul.

I didn't feel guilty, then, about being still alive when my brothers weren't, and about having grovelled to Nettlebrand and promised to do the work of all twelve of us if he would spare me. I didn't let myself feel anything at all. But if Mizell had survived, and had known that I was still working for Nettlebrand, I'm sure he'd have despised me for being so cowardly. If he is still alive and got away somehow, maybe that's why he never came back to look for me.

Anyway, he probably isn't alive. Homunculi who actually succeed in running away, like Mouse, must be staggeringly rare. And Mouse doesn't really have anything to feel guilty about, if he had never even experienced friendship and loyalty in the first place.

I want to be able to help him. I just don't know what sort of help he needs that I can give. But I've promised to sculpt him, at any rate.

Tuesday 6th October 2015

Today, Mouse wanted me to start work on his face. 'Ngoazh!' At first I tried pinching out the plasticine of his face very slightly, to create a flattened nose like those of the Grass People, so that it was less likely to break off, but when Mouse had had a look at his reflection in the jam-jar lid we use as a mirror, he wasn't at all satisfied. 'Ong – glong – lllong ngoazh!' he said firmly. 'Llike yourzh.' I pinched out a bit more clay to make his nose long and pointed, until he was satisfied.

Next he wanted, 'Ee-yazh!' Of course, he already has ear-holes, but he wanted more than that: big, shell-like, labyrinthine ears, with the intricate curves and twists that real human ears would have. I climbed back onto the table to fetch my smartphone to look up images of ears (and it isn't easy climbing down a table-leg with a phone tucked under one arm), and Mouse chose the shape he liked best: normal human ears, not plastic joke ears, but rounded, not too narrow, and with the lobe fully detached from the side of the head. It must hurt him to have his plasticine flesh pinched and pulled into new shapes, but he puts up with it patiently. When I had finished, I fitted tiny shreds of cling-film around all the folds of the ears, so that they can't be squashed flat if he accidentally lies on them. Just to be on the safe side, though, he went to sleep lying on his back, with his head pillowed on a folded-up paper tissue.

It's lonely being on my own, with no-one to talk to except Mouse, who needs to sleep much of the time because all these changes in his body are so tiring. Even when he's awake, our conversations tend to be limited. And yet I can't go out and leave him on his own when I want to be with Ben, because virtually anything could happen to Mouse while I was away. And I can't ask Ben to come down here, because Mouse is frightened of boys. So for the past two days I've been on my own with Mouse, snacking on woodlice when I start to feel weak and realise that I must be getting hungry. I sleep when he does, and wake when he cries. I've brought my pullover-nest down to the floor, next to Mouse's tin tray, so as to be with him as soon as he wakes. Mouse doesn't seem to feel cold, or want any covering apart from his clingfilm. The woolly jersey is warm and comforting for me to sleep in, now that autumn is setting in, but its Ben-smell has faded and badly needs recharging.

Maybe this is part of what being a parent is like. I suppose I'm lucky that, instead of having to cope with a baby who needs feeding and changing, I'm responsible only for a clay man who doesn't need to eat or excrete or even breathe. But that doesn't stop it being tiring.


	4. Chapter 4

Thursday 8th October 2015

Mouse finally seems to be settling in and accepting that nothing bad is going to happen to him here. I've continued with the sculpting. After the ears and nose, the next thing he wanted was 'hay-ah!' which I managed to work into his head with an old, frayed, toothbrush. He didn't just want hair on the back of his head (and running down his neck, to prove that he was no longer in the military and didn't need to keep his hair short), but also 'whishkazh,' so I did my best to brush sideburns onto his face. He would have liked a hairy body, too, but I couldn't think of a way of keeping the grooves that represented hair once the cling-film was patted back into place. As it is, sleeping with his head lying on anything would tend to flatten out the grooves there, so Miss Guinevere helped me stuff some cotton-wool into a paper bag to make a pillow for Mouse's whole upper body, so that he can sleep lying slightly propped up.

Today, he asked for 'hangg ang gheek.' He insisted on making the hands as long-fingered and delicate as possible, and I really, really hope that the clingfilm wrappings around his fingers are sufficient to stop them from dropping off. I managed to make him see that, as his body is fairly dense for his size, he really did need broad, sturdy feet to support his weight. They've wound up looking more like a dragon's paws than the feet of any humanoid, but he seems happy.

When we're not working on sculpture but Mouse doesn't feel sleepy, I read to him, mostly from the Bestiary. It's the one on supposedly 'ordinary' animals, rather than Professor Greenbloom's notes on magical creatures, but many 'ordinary' creatures are even stranger. Much of the book is about the animals' sex lives: for example, the way that a female hyena has a penis, through which she conceives and gives birth, which, not surprisingly, is painful and very dangerous. Female komodo dragons (who are actually giant lizards, and only very distantly related to the true dragons) can give birth without having mated at all, and their offspring are always males. A male lizard has two penises, but birds and tuataras have none (as far as I know, silver dragons don't seem to either), and a male koala has a forked penis to penetrate the female's two vaginas.

Perhaps I read out rather too much of this, as Mouse now doesn't want an anatomically correct torso at all. This is actually quite logical. After all, apart from his transplanted mammalian heart, he doesn't seem to have any internal organs, so it's not as if he needs to excrete, and he's unlikely to find a sexual partner. Appendages that could easily snap off might be painful for him, and, as he is adamant that he never wants to wear clothes again, going around looking like a small naked man isn't likely to make him popular.

So why does he need a heart? What is it doing, if he doesn't have arteries, capillaries and veins to circulate blood around his body? This is something else I learned about only recently. I had thought that the liver turned food into blood and distributed the blood to the body where it was consumed, including sending some to the heart to be mixed with air, after which it flowed out through the arteries to give the body whatever else it needed. But now it turns out that the body doesn't produce and use up blood, but recycles it, sending it through the heart to receive oxygen (the part of air that people actually breathe) and then out through the arteries, around the body via the capillaries until the oxygen is used up, and then back to the heart by the veins.

And yet, while blood in general goes on and on, apparently 'blood' isn't just a red liquid, but a fluid containing millions of cells, tiny creatures who are born inside the bones, somehow swim out into the blood, where they live and die within a space of a few months. There are different kinds, who each do their part to serve the body: the red cells, who carry oxygen around (and can live about three months in the body, or one month if kept in captivity); the white cells, heroic warriors who fight off invading creatures that cause disease (the white cells live two to three weeks, if they don't die in battle before that), and platelets, who press themselves together at a wound to stop someone bleeding to death (they live only eight or nine days).

Everything about the world is stranger and more wonderful than I had ever realised. Admittedly, I wouldn't want to be a doctor and actually have to take blood samples, but reading about it is like the most thrilling epic ever written.

Friday 9th October 2015

Today was the most delicate and important procedure of all: Mouse finally asked for 'kung ang hliksh and keesh.' It wasn't too difficult to shape his tongue and wrap it in clingfilm, but I wondered what to do about the teeth: if they squidged into a solid lump, he wouldn't be able to pronounce letters that depend on hissing between the teeth. In the end, I settled on cutting out each individual tooth with a needle, and then wrapping it in a folded piece of paper. I know these paper caps will stick to Mouse's clay, but it doesn't really matter, as he doesn't need to take them off.

As soon as they were ready, he began practising talking: first saying the alphabet, and then rehearsing tongue-twisters: 'She sells sea shells on the sea-shore. She spins sea-spells on the sea-shore. Steve smacks sea-snakes on the sea-shore.' It's strange to hear someone talking who is neither a baby learning to use language for the first time, nor an adult learning a new language (the way Toby and I tried to learn at least a bit of each other's languages), but someone who has been hearing and understanding words all his life, without being able to pronounce them until now.

Mouse wasn't really talking to me, just practising words for their own sake, so when I asked whether it was all right to leave him on his own for the evening, he grinned with all his sharp, white teeth, and said, 'Yessss!'

Tonight was the night that Atticus was coming to visit. He had (I'd gathered from snatches of conversation upstairs) agreed cheerfully when Professora Greenbloom invited him to dinner, but warned that he doesn't eat much. When she asked him whether there was anything he didn't eat, he said, 'Vegetarian food,' before adding that he is allergic to garlic and silver. His favourite is rare liver (as in barely cooked, not sliced off an endangered species – he's happy with pork or lamb). Everyone else was having quiche, and there were dishes of broccoli and peas, and chocolate torte to follow, which Atticus could take or leave, depending on how exclusively carnivorous he was.

I was already hiding in my Master's jacket pocket when the doorbell rang at 7. Professor Greenbloom opened the door, and a tall, green-haired, man-shaped being breezed in and held up a palm to slap it against the Professor's, in some kind of greeting ritual. 'Hey, man, good to meet you – you must be Benny's dad, right?'

'That's right – well, officially I'm his foster carer until the adoption certificate comes through. My name's Barnabas – you've already met my wife Vita, of course. And this is Billy.'

Billy, who had turned up in ginger-tomcat mode for the occasion, hissed menacingly at Atticus, who just shrugged.

'Hey, Benny, Billy, and Barney – Barney like the dinosaur, right? You'd look good with purple hair!'

'Thank you, but I don't mind settling for grey. Can I offer you anything to drink, by the way?'

'Yeah, cool, I'll have red wine, please.' While the Professor was pouring it, Atticus turned to my Master. 'Hey, dude, good to see you. No Ivan? I thought you two were BFF?'

'Yes, but – he could not tonight here come,' said my Master.

'Are you still getting on okay? I didn't wreck it by giving you that money at Play Factore, did I?' Atticus sounded anxious.

'No, no – we are still friends.'

'So, what do you talk about, when you hang out together?' Atticus asked, as everyone sat down to eat.

My Master tried to think of a safe, neutral topic, as he could hardly say, 'You.' 'Football,' he lied. 'Manchester United and Bayern München.'

'Wow, Ivan's developed a taste for soccer in the two months he's been here? I'd have thought it'd take longer than that to wean him off American football – or is he more the baseball type?'

Nobody said anything.

'D'you ever talk about anything else? Like – dragons?' Atticus paused to see whether there was any reaction, then grinned, showing white, even teeth – no obvious fangs, but long, very white teeth that might have been caps covering fangs. 'I heard about that RS presentation of yours – a girl in my class has a brother in your year. It sounds so-o-o cool – it almost makes me wish I did RS, so that I could have heard it!'

'Out of interest, what are you studying?' asked the Professora.

'A-levels: Geography, Ancient History, and Urdu. I dropped out of school a while ago, but then I realised, hey, I'm nearly nineteen, this is my last chance to drop back in and get some A-levels if I want to go to uni. Wouldn't have minded doing Computer Science, but I'm trying to fit in three two-year courses in less than one year, and – well, humanities subjects are easier to catch up on. Plus, I've travelled a bit, and my best friend when I was younger was Pakistani, so I'm not a total beginner.'

I couldn't know for certain what species Atticus was (though all the evidence suggested vampire), but I was sure that he was lying as much as my Master was. Not necessarily about what he was studying, but about being eighteen and applying to university. He was someone who was desperately trying to play a part, in case people didn't accept him if they knew what he was. _These people will!_ I thought at him, wishing I really could project mind-speech. _Just tell them the truth!_

As he wasn't ready to open up, the Professor and Professora played along with his story, nodding approvingly at his choice of subjects, and asking what universities he was applying to, what he wanted to study, and what he wanted to do when he graduated. The Professor talked about the excavations in Egypt that he had worked on in the summer, which were always eager for student volunteers, and asked whether Atticus had ever been on an archaeology camp?

Atticus laughed too loudly (he was on his third glass of wine by now). 'Nah, Egypt's not my style!' he said. 'I burn way too easily. Gosh, I must sound like a vampire, mustn't I – not liking sunlight, not eating garlic or eating off silver! Do you reckon vampires really exist?'

'I can't see why they shouldn't,' said the Professor.

'Would you want to meet one?' Atticus addressed this remark to Miss Guinevere. 'Loads of girls are into girl-meets-vampire stories, aren't they? Sort of neck-romance-y?'

Miss Guinevere shrugged. 'Well, yes, but they're mainly the same people who spent all their time reading pony books when they were a bit younger. I like horses, but I don't need to have a horse for my life to be complete. And I suppose I feel the same way about vampires.'

'So, Gwinny, if you could meet any mythical creature in the world, which would you choose?' Atticus asked.

'A fossegrim,' said Miss Guinevere. 'They're water-spirits who live under waterfalls and play the violin.'

'What about you, Benny? Yours would definitely be a dragon, right?'

'Dragons are my favourite _big_ creature,' said my Master. 'My favourite smaller creature is a homunculus.'

'Vita?'

'Oh, I think probably a pegasus.'

'And you, Barney?'

'Well, it's hard to choose,' said the Professor, 'but I'd be very glad to make friends with a vampire. I imagine that most of them are badly misunderstood creatures – probably because the few who behave badly are the ones who attract attention, and so the rest are afraid to admit to being vampires at all. What do you think?'

'Yeah, prob'ly, if they existed,' said Atticus, with an exaggerated yawn. 'But they're just fantasy, right? C'mon, it's not Hallowe'en for three weeks yet! Anyway, that liver was gorgeous – what's for pud?'

'What creature would _you_ like to meet?' asked my Master, as Atticus poured cream over a large helping of chocolate torte. It smelled delicious (and tasted it, when my Master unobtrusively slipped a crumb to me), but I wasn't sure chocolate was good for vampires, especially washed down with the beginning of a second bottle of wine.

'Me?' said Atticus. 'A dragon – if she promised not to flame me. I wouldn't want to run into a dragon who didn't know me.'

He had said _she_ , not _it_. Was he thinking of a particular dragon? Was Atticus a dragon-rider too? The people in the fishing village seemed to think my Master was the first human dragon-rider for hundreds of years, and they lived in a part of the world that was friendly to dragons. What were the chances of three of the pupils at the same school in England just happening to be friends with dragons?

'We went to Pakistan in the summer holidays,' said Miss Guinevere brightly. 'When you said your best friend was Pakistani, was he born in Britain but with Pakistani parents, or actually from Pakistan?'

'He was from Pakistan. But he's dead now, and – I just don't want to talk about it, okay? Okay? Did you invite me here to drive a stake through my entire private life?' Atticus stood up, rather shakily.

'Atticus, I'm sorry. We truly didn't mean to upset you,' said the Professor, putting a reassuring hand on his shoulder. 'If you're not feeling well, can we give you a lift home? Or should I phone your parents and ask them to collect you?'

'They're dead, too!' snapped Atticus. ' _Everyone_ I've ever loved is dead! So just leave me alone, okay? I can walk home, I'm fine. Only,' he added, 'can I use the loo first? That chocolate cake was gorgeous, only – well, pigging out like that was a bit of a mistake.'

'Easily done,' said the Professor sympathetically. 'The loo's upstairs, middle door on the landing.'

Atticus staggered upstairs by clinging to the banister-rail, threw up noisily, and reappeared a few minutes later, after dousing his head thoroughly in cold water.

'Sorry about that,' he said. 'Anyway, walk home'll clear my head. Bye, Benny, see you at school.' And with that he left.

'He's not usually like that,' said my Master, when Atticus was gone. 'I mean, at school he clowns around a lot, but he isn't usually that bad.'

'Perhaps he just felt nervous,' suggested the Professor. 'I shouldn't have pushed so hard, asking him about himself – and if he's trying to avoid drinking human blood, maybe wine was the nearest substitute he could find, to give himself confidence. And if drinking alcohol made him feel hungry, when he's not used to eating – well, drunkenness and indigestion isn't a pleasant combination for anyone, whatever their species.'

'Maybe,' said Billy. 'Or maybe he was doing it deliberately.'

'Deliberately?' said my Master. 'Why would he want to?'

'Who knows? Maybe to make your parents forbid you to see him, so that he could be the pariah-friend you meet with secretly, because the role of accepted friend is already occupied by Ivan. Maybe to test whether your parents would put up with him. Maybe to prove to himself that everyone hates him and he can't have a friend ever again, because it would be too painful to have another friend and lose him. Who knows what might make sense to a vampire?'

'He's obviously very lonely,' said the Professor. 'I wonder how old he is really? A hundred? Three hundred? Older?'

'You're not going to adopt him as well, are you?' groaned Billy. 'I've got used to having another human round here, even a homunculus – _two_ homunculi, now – but I draw the line at vampires!'


	5. Chapter 5

Saturday 10th October 2015

This morning, Mouse actually asked, 'Can I – come up-stairs – with you? I would-n't – mind – mee-ting your hu-mans.' He still has to stop and think carefully about how to pronounce every syllable, but he's flawless – and perhaps being able to speak properly made him more confident that the humans would accept him as a person.

We talked in English, as Mouse doesn't know much German. However, there was a letter in German today, addressed to the Professor and Professora. After looking at it, they said that it wasn't private and that I was welcome to read it out and translate it for Mouse. The letter was dated '22,543rd April 11th 1954'.

'What does that mean?' I asked.

It wasn't the Professor or the Professora but Mouse who answered, in his slow, careful speech. 'It means that the letter comes from someone in a Loop where it's always April 11th, 1954, while the rest of the world moves on at one day every twenty-four hours, and they've had 22,543 days of April 11th 1954 now. I expect whoever is in charge of the Loop resets it to late night of April 10th, somewhere near midnight. Miss Peregrine always resets the time a bit earlier than midnight, just before the bombers blow everyone to pieces, but she lets the older children stay up and watch until the bomb _nearly_ hits them.'

'So, this letter was written on a day corresponding to our Thursday 1st October 2015? Nine days ago?' I asked, after doing some hasty mental arithmetic.

'That sounds about right,' said the Professora. 'Miss Phoenix usually writes to Barnabas and me every few hundred days, but of course she can't send an email from the 1950s.'

My Master was still trying to make sense of this. 'So – your friend Miss Phoenix is a time-traveller? Cool!'

'If anything, it's the other way round,' said the Professor. ' _We're_ the time-travellers – you, me, all our neighbours, all the billions of people moving through time at one day every twenty-four hours, as Mouse said. But when I was around your age, I spent several thousand days _not_ time-travelling – which meant that I went on being twelve all that time, until I met Vita and left the Loop and had to get used to being in my twenties. And we still write to some of the non-time-travellers we were friends with at that time.'

I read on: '"My dear children – for that is how I still think of you, even though I know that you must be in your forties by now, and poor Johannes nearly seventy – though I don't suppose he looks his age! Have you heard from him lately? I have had no message from him for over two thousand days now. He was convinced that his Peculiarity would protect him while he fought the Hollows, but we all know how well dear Johannes' plans generally work out!"'

The two grown-up humans looked at each other. 'Have _you_ seen Johan?' asked the Professora.

The Professor considered. 'I suppose the last time was when he helped me rescue that yeti from poachers, and that was before Guinevere was even born. He said a friend of his – another Hollow-hunter – Abe Portman, that was his name – had asked Johan to come to America and help him. But Johan said he was fed up with Hollows and was planning to pack it all in and live as a yeti.'

'He could have been saying that to confuse any Hollows or Wights who might be listening,' pointed out the Professora. 'He could easily have gone to America with Portman. Or he could have followed us here to keep an eye on us. Just because we haven't _seen_ him doesn't prove anything, does it?'

'Anyway, I don't need Johan to protect me from the Hollows,' said the Professor. 'Not when I've got you.'

I was still trying to make sense of something else. 'Didn't you say that wights are dangerous, too?' I asked. 'You said once that "wight" was the proper word for a forest kobold like Sorrel, even though most people here call them all brownies. If Sorrel might be an enemy, how do you know that house-brownies like Hob and Bwbach aren't, too?'

I had been frightened of Sorrel at first, but that was just because she was much bigger than I was, with vicious teeth and claws, and obviously didn't like me or trust me. But then – she had been right not to, given that I had been a spy for a monster who wanted to hunt down her and Firedrake and eat them. She wasn't a nice person, but she was – apparently – on the side of good, and I wasn't. If Sorrel herself might be a spy in league with monsters who were possibly even worse than Nettlebrand – but that didn't make sense. Why would Professor Greenbloom have been willing to be friendly to her then? And why would he have invited in the six brownies who lived with us: Billy, Robbie, Lobber, Hob, Bwbach, and Blue?

The thought made me want to run to my Master and hide in his pocket and never come out. But Mouse was looking even more terrified than I felt, and Mouse doesn't trust boys any more than he trusts Hollows. I stayed with him, putting my arm round his clingfilm-wrapped shoulders.

The Professor shook his head. 'I'm sorry!' he said. 'That's the trouble with language – there are far more creatures than words. It's like the way we use the same word "salamander" for creatures who live in fire, and for amphibians who live in damp places and have a completely different set of powers, like re-growing limbs. The confusion must have killed any number of amphibious salamanders who were thrown into fire by people trying to test whether they really were unharmed.'

'Yes,' I said. 'My creator caught a fire-salamander who lived happily in his furnace for a few weeks, until he took it out and cut off its legs and eyes to see whether it really could regrow them. Of course, it was the wrong kind of salamander and couldn't, so my creator kept it and sheared its wool to knit himself a fireproof vest.'

'Poor creature!' said the Professor. 'And this sort of thing happens because of a simple case of misnaming – fire-salamanders are actually more closely related to dragons than to amphibians. So, yes, "wight" is a word to distinguish forest brownies from house-brownies like Hob, but it's nothing to do with the sort of Wight I was talking about here. The word really just means "person", if you go back far enough. Anyway, are you going to read out the rest of Miss Phoenix's letter?'

'"I hope you two are keeping yourselves safe. Barnabas, my dear, please be on your guard when you travel without Vita. You know that Wights do not always need to disguise their pupil-less eyes with sunglasses, if they can pass themselves off as normal humans with coloured contact lenses. As for the Hollows themselves – you may not be able to see them in the flesh, but you can see their shadows, and their reflections in mirrors. I know you were always the gentlest of boys and hated to hurt any living creature, but Hollows are _not_ living creatures! If one attacks you, remember to cut off its tongues and stab out its eyes.

'"Perhaps you feel that you do not need my warnings. Your wedding-ring, as it symbolises Vita's love and commitment to you, _may_ serve to ward off Hollows even in her absence, but I would prefer it if she were with you in person. All the same, I hope you have the sense to keep the ring on at all times. Probably by now your fingers will have thickened so much that it would be difficult to remove it in any case…"'

I broke off – though in any case there was nothing left to read beyond one adult signature, an assortment of children's signatures, and symbols for hugs and kisses. Now that I thought back, Professor Greenbloom had been wearing a gold ring on his left hand when I first met him. It hadn't been a signet ring, or a magic ring inscribed with runes, or anything like that, but just a plain gold band. Now, he wore no jewellery of any kind. However, there was an indentation on the third finger of his left hand, as though a ring had sat there undisturbed for a long time.

'Do you mean you haven't _told_ her?' asked the Professora, sounding both indignant and frightened.

'I don't want to worry Miss Phoenix, when she's busy looking after the children who stayed, and worrying about Johan. Anyway, the ring saved my life. If I hadn't had something to bribe Gravelbeard with, he'd never have helped me escape from Nettlebrand, and right then, Nettlebrand was a much more immediate threat than the Hollows.'

'Who is Nettlebrand?' asked Mouse, at the same time that my Master asked, 'What are Hollows?'

Everyone started talking at once, and fell silent, and then Professor Greenbloom said, 'Well, the shortest answer to both questions is: they are monsters. Hollows are monsters who hunt humans – especially Peculiars, people who were born with unusual talents and can go into Time Loops – and the Wights, in the sense that Miss Phoenix's letter uses the word, are human-like creatures who act as spies to lead the Hollows to us. Nettlebrand was a monster who was created to hunt dragons, but he doesn't exist any more.'

'And I was his spy,' I said, forcing myself to get the words out before I had time to think better of it. 'Mouse, when you first met me, you asked me whether my – whether Ben was a Nazi spy. Well, _he_ isn't, but _I_ was originally sent to spy on Ben and his friends, and it was my fault Net- Net…'

I was crying too much to get the words out. Everyone said reassuring things like, 'It's all right, we still love you,' and, 'It doesn't matter now, Nettlebrand's gone anyway.' (Well, all the humans did – Mouse just looked confused, and Lobber, the only one of the brownies who was in the room, was busy licking the last smears of yoghurt out of a carton and trying not to get any on his fur.)

'But it _does_ matter!' I said. 'Professor Greenbloom had to give his ring away to – to a dwarf who was another of Nettlebrand's minions, and that means he's got nothing to protect him against the Hollows any more!' I wanted to feel that it was all Gravelbeard's fault, so that I could be angry with him, but I knew that it made more sense to be angry with myself. Gravelbeard was just being Gravelbeard, constantly willing to side with the latest person who offered him something shiny. But I should have had enough decency not to set a monster on someone who had shown me nothing but kindness – and now, it seemed, I had put him in danger from another set of monsters, who had been pursuing him for far longer.

'My dear Twigleg, it was my decision and no-one else's!' said the Professor firmly. 'And besides, a ring is only a symbol. If the fact of the love between Vita and me isn't enough to keep the Hollows off, I don't see how a piece of metal could make any difference.' He spoke with the conviction of a man who isn't at all sure he is right, but very much wants to convince himself and, if possible, everyone else, that he is.

'What makes someone a Peculiar?' asked Miss Guinevere. 'The letter said Johan hoped his Peculiarity would keep him safe. Is he invisible?'

'Not exactly,' said the Professora. 'But he's a shape-shifter.'

'So he could turn into a super-powerful creature who can kill Hollows?' asked my Master.

'Can he change into a form that can _see_ Hollows?' I asked.

'Yes to both,' said the Professor, 'but I'd be happier if there was a way to deal with Hollows that didn't involve killing them. After all, they were people once.'

'So, have you superpowers as well?' asked my Master.

'Not like Johan,' said the Professor. 'But then again, I do tend to attract fabulous beings rather more than most people do. I told you about the nisses on my grandparents' farm, didn't I?'

'The one who lost his temperature – I mean, lost his temper, because your grandmother put butter under his porridge, instead of on top?'

'That's right. Well, my grandparents had never seen a nisse, and didn't really believe in them – they didn't know whether it was the horses or mice or something else that ate the porridge, but they put it out "for the nisses" because that was what you did if you were a Norwegian farmer in those days. They told me stories about them, but they thought they _were_ just stories. And when I spent my time playing in the barn, and came in at tea-time to tell my grandparents how much fun I'd had playing with nisse children, they assumed that was just make-believe, too.

'Well, everyone was happy with that when I was little. But when I was twelve and still insisting that I had friends who were nisses and dwarves and trolls and so on, the other children at school thought I was mad, and even my parents were starting to worry. In the end I decided to invite a troll friend to tea so that my parents could see that he was real, and then they really panicked, and forbade me to have anything to do with creatures like that ever again. So I ran away, and that was when Miss Phoenix found me – she was travelling in bird form, of course – and took me to her Loop. She explained that I would have to live in a time twenty years ago, so we wouldn't have colour television, and that I wouldn't be able to grow any older, or step out of the Loop for more than a few minutes, or visit my parents again. I asked whether my fabulous-being friends could visit me in the Loop, and Miss Phoenix said of course they could.

'It turned out that she ran a refuge for fabulous beings, as well as an orphanage for Peculiar children like Johan and me. Johan had been eight for about ten thousand days then. He used to grumble about having to live on a quiet day in the 1950s, instead of in the middle of a war, but I thought it was a wonderful place, with Peculiars and dwarves and elves and mermaids, and Miss Phoenix who could change into a real phoenix, and Johan who could change into anything and everything – other than a bird, because only ymbrynes like Miss Phoenix can do that. And then, about three thousand April 11ths later, I met Vita.'

'Are _you_ a Peculiar because you attract fabulous beings, too?' asked Miss Guinevere.

'That might be part of it, but my main Peculiarity is something else,' said her mother. 'I was looking for a job for the summer between leaving school and going to university, and I really wanted to work with fabulous beings, but I didn't know who I could ask about that, so I thought I'd probably have to settle for some job working in a nursery. And then, when I was out walking and spotted a fairy and started following her, I found my way into Miss Phoenix's Loop, and started to make friends.'

'Did you fall in love at once?' asked Miss Guinevere.

'Not exactly,' said the Professor. 'After all, your mother was a grown-up lady of eighteen, and I still had a physical and emotional age of twelve. But we became friends, because she was one of the few people I'd met in the outside world who admitted to having met fabulous beings. And when she talked about going to university, and wanting to find some kind of job that would involve a lot of travel to remote parts of the world, I realised that I could do that, too, if I left now, before I was too old and leaving would be too much of a shock.'

'Miss Phoenix didn't really want me to go,' said the Professora. 'She'd have preferred it if I'd moved in, but at the very least she'd have liked me to come each day, to help keep her wards safe. But she agreed to let Barnabas leave, as long as he left with me.'

'Why did he need to be with you?' asked Mouse.

'Because of my Peculiarity,' said the Professora. 'I repel Hollows.'


	6. Chapter 6

Sunday 11th October 2015

Looking back at this diary, I've just realised that I forgot even to mention the news reports two weeks ago about the dragons. I was planning to sellotape the September 27th cutting about the flock of 'giant birds' who had taken off from Scotland into this diary, but then I thought that Professor Greenbloom would probably want it for his own scrapbook on dragons. In any case, right then I was mainly worried about a different evacuation project: finding new homes for the Tree People at the bottom of the garden.

Still, we were fairly sure that everything had gone smoothly – not only had Firedrake and Sorrel, Maia and Burr-Burr-Chan managed to find the valley Firedrake came from, and not only had the other dragons been still alive, but they had agreed to go with them. It was full moon then – or to be precise, they had taken off while the moon was still waxing, around 25th September, to give themselves the maximum amount of moonlight between then and 3rd October. Now, the moon is barely a sliver, and the follow-up stories have dwindled from a story into the newspaper to a trickle of videos on YouTube which nobody actually believes, as everyone assumes they were faked in some way. Still, it seems as if the dragons are making good progress.

What I do know is that this morning, Lola Greytail arrived here. Blue was the first to see her: he was in the garden, spotted a miniature aeroplane flying low around the house, and pounced on it, grabbing one wing in each front paw. Even though the aeroplane is so small, the impact of it still knocked him over, and he found himself confronted with a rat in a leather suit and goggles, standing on his chest and threatening him with a gun (it's only a signalling device, but Blue couldn't know that).

If I'd been in his position, I'd have panicked, but Blue just laughed. 'A rat in clothes?' he exclaimed. 'I've never seen that before!'

'Yeah? Well, I've never seen a brownie wearing jeans, either – oh, hi, Ben, hi, hompulus,' (as we came out to see what was going on). 'How's it going?'

'How's Firedrake?' asked my Master (speaking German because it was quicker than working out how to translate his thoughts into English). 'How far have they got? Have they got enough moon-dew for all the dragons, or are they hiding somewhere until the next moon? Is everyone all right?'

'I haven't the foggiest!' retorted Lola. 'Well, no – I know not _everyone_ is all right. That's why I've been flying around Britain for the past two weeks trying to find you, instead of catching up on seeing Rosa and everyone!'

'Is someone hurt?' asked my Master. 'Firedrake? Maia? Sorrel?'

'No, they're fine, as far as I know. Everyone left the valley safely, except Slatebeard.'

'There are dwarves in the valley, too?' I asked. It certainly sounded like a dwarfish name. Dwarves aren't exactly my favourite species, but I suppose they need a safe home.

'No – well, there _were_ , but they left, too. Thirty-four brownies, eighteen dwarves, and all the dragons except an old one called Slatebeard, who's so weak he can barely fly. The others tried seeing whether they could carry him balanced across their backs, if some of the brownies tied him on with ropes, but realistically, there was no way it was going to work. So Firedrake said, "Barnabas will know what to do. Or he'll have friends who do. Please, Lola, couldn't you go and look for him? He lives quite near here, in a big town in north-west England – it can't take long to find it."' Lola's whiskers twitched with exasperation. 'I've searched the whole of Blackpool, Blackburn, Liverpool, St Helen's, Warrington, Wigan, Bolton, Stockport, Sale, and Rochdale before I got to you!'

By this time, Professor Greenbloom had come out to join us, too. 'My esteemed Lola, it's good to see you,' he said. 'Yes, of course I'll try to think of something, but in the meantime, would you like to come in? Have you had breakfast?'

'Yes, about dawn. I wouldn't mind a snack, though – anything as long as it makes a change from porridge!'

'She just knocked me down!' protested Blue.

'Only because you tried to pounce on my plane!'

We came inside, and introduced Lola to everyone, including Mouse, who gazed adoringly and wistfully at Lola and said nothing. While Lola ate scrambled eggs and Blue soothed his feelings with a mug of milky hot chocolate, the humans discussed what to do.

'Could Zubeida not help him?' asked my Master, switching to English so as not to exclude Mouse. 'Maybe needs Slatebeard only some moon-flower-dew?'

Lola shook her head. 'We tried that. Firedrake and Maia went to the dralolokist's village first, to pick up as much moon-dew as they thought they'd need for thirty dragons for the moonless part of the journey, but when they saw that Slatebeard could barely fly even at full moon, Firedrake insisted on giving Slatebeard some immediately. He said that if they ran short, he'd do without his share on the journey and get Maia to lead them back.'

'Has Sorrel not argued about that?' asked my Master.

'She was too busy crying. Slatebeard is her friend, too, after all. She tried to feed him a few drops, but it didn't seem to make any difference. In the end, Slatebeard asked her and Burr-Burr-Chan if they could go and see whether there were any mushrooms that might help, and they went off arguing about whether lion's mane mushrooms grow in Britain, and whether they're the same thing as hedgehog fungus or not.'

'I'm sure Zubeida would want to help,' said Professor Greenbloom. 'I'll email her – and Bağdagül Ender, and a few others. If it's a group email, they can see each other's suggestions.'

'We ought to set up a video conference system, so that they can talk to each other,' suggested Miss Guinevere.

'If I had the money, I'd gladly do that. But email's a start, and…' the Professor broke off suddenly. 'I've thought of someone else who might be able to help,' he said. 'Lola, have you ever been to Norway?'

'No, I haven't,' said Lola, sounding interested. 'There's a story in my family that it's where we came from originally, and that we were pirate rats who came to Britain with the Vikings. I'd like it to be true, but I think we came from China originally. Still, I've got family over there that I haven't seen for yonks. Were you planning to sweet-talk me into flying over?'

'It's just that I've got a friend over there who might be able to help Slatebeard, and I think you'd probably enjoy meeting him. He can seem a bit gruff at first, but he's got a heart of – well, probably something a lot like wood, come to think of it. If I give you his address, could you bear to go over and have a word with him?'

'Can't you email him first?' asked Miss Guinevere.

'Not really, no,' said the Professor. 'Computers don't seem to work when there are trolls around – other than the sort who post unkind comments on Facebook, of course.'

'Your friend works with trolls?' asked my Master.

'Well, sometimes, yes. But after all, he _is_ a troll: a diurnal fjord-troll, to be precise. I was just thinking that Norway is much less densely populated than Britain – even Scotland – and that Hothbrodd could probably find Slatebeard a safe place to shelter, until he's able to fly on and join the others. He might even be able to find a way of getting him out without attracting too much attention. But talking of attention, do you think we should tell James Marrs – Ivan's father – about this?'

'No!' said everyone else. I hadn't even realised that Ivan's father was called Marrs – I had assumed his name was Newlands, like his sons.

'But we need more humans to understand dragons,' argued the Professor. 'At the moment, he's coming round to accepting that dragons exist, but he still thinks of them as things to be studied, rather than people who deserve respect. If he had the chance to meet Slatebeard, he might change his mind. And at least he doesn't seem like the kind of person who would go on insisting that there are no such things as dragons when he's face to face with one.'

'I think I should ask Ivan,' said my Master. 'He knows his father best, finally.'

'Yes, that's a good idea,' said the Professora. 'Barnabas, sometimes you really need to be careful in deciding who to trust.'

'Sometimes,' said the Professor, looking directly at me, 'I'm very glad to have taken the risk.'

By this time, Mouse finally found his voice. 'Ma'am,' he said to Lola, 'if you're going to Norway, and if you could do with a spotter while you fly the plane – well, I'm good at watching and not being noticed, and I don't eat.'

'Careful,' I said. 'Lola is an absolutely terrifying pilot.'

'Oh, stop fussing!' said Lola. 'This type of honunkupus doesn't even have a stomach to get airsick.'

'No, but he's made of plasticine,' I pointed out. 'One sudden dive, and his head could squash against the ceiling.'

'I'm not afraid,' said Mouse. 'Just because I'm a pacifist doesn't mean I'm a coward.'

'Well, I'm not sure I am a pacifist, but I'm definitely a coward about being in a plane flown by Lola,' I said.

'Tell you what, why don't you come for a short flight this afternoon?' suggested Lola, to Mouse. 'Then you'll know how you feel about it.'

'Go we all!' suggested my Master, and we did: not the adults, who were still busy contacting anyone who might have suggestions about how to help Slatebeard, but my Master and Miss Guinevere, I hidden in my Master's jacket pocket, and Lola soaring above us with Mouse in the passenger seat. If anyone had looked at us, they would just have seen two children playing with a (presumably remote-controlled) toy aeroplane; and if they had looked a bit more closely, they might have assumed that the children had forced a rat into dolls' clothes and stuffed it inside the plane, along with a plasticine model.

We came back for Lola to refuel her plane with petrol from the Greenblooms' car, and stock up on provisions, and for her and Mouse to take down further notes on how to find Hothbrodd. Mouse's red eyes were glowing more brightly than ever with excitement about the adventure, and they're planning to leave by 7am tomorrow.

I pointed out to Lola how careful she needed to be, and how easily squashed Mouse's boneless body was. Mouse pointed out that this meant that he couldn't actually suffer injuries such as ruptured organs or broken bones. I want to hold onto him, as tightly as possible, and stop him going, but I know that I'd only squash him if I did. I have to let him choose, even if I'm frightened that he might not come back alive.

Maybe feeling like this is part of what being a parent means.


	7. Chapter 7

Monday 12th October 2015

It's only just turned Monday, but I've had such a horrible dream that I don't feel ready to go back to sleep. I'm writing this by the light of the torch on my phone, which doesn't seem to disturb Mouse. I suppose, as his eyes don't shut (their fire just grows dimmer when he's asleep), he's learnt to ignore light.

I dreamed that my Master and Ivan and I had run away to rescue captive dragons, and that we were attacked by a dragon who burned my Master's arm so badly that he needed hospital treatment, but we had been stealing food to survive (not to mention stealing dragons from laboratories) and didn't dare go near a hospital, and so the injury just kept on getting worse, and my Master seemed to be dying, which meant I must die too – except that I woke up at that point. I managed to prevent myself from screaming just in time to avoid waking Mouse.

Down the ages, some philosophers have believed that dreams were prophecies, while others held them to be merely the result of an imbalance of humours in the body. Most sages these days seem to think that, while dreams don't tell you what the future holds, they are a way for the hidden parts of your brain to tell you about the thoughts you didn't know you were thinking. I suspect this one simply meant that I am thoroughly selfish and worried that my Master might like someone else more than he likes me, which means that I'm jealous of Ivan and even jealous of dragons, and therefore trying to convince myself that Ivan and dragons pose a threat to him. Even though I know that silver dragons like Firedrake don't harm humans with their flame – who knows what other species of dragon might still be out there?

The dragon in the dream looked utterly unlike Firedrake, and rather like a dragon in the DVD we watched with Ivan once. He was apparently meant to be Toothless, even though he looked nothing like Hiccup's description and pictures of Toothless as a young dragon. Then again, Hiccup does describe rescuing an older dragon, Furious, who had been cruelly imprisoned. Furious had been a great friend of one of Hiccup's ancestors, but, heartbroken at losing him and angry at the way that dragons were now treated as slaves rather than friends and equals, he had declared war on the human race. Apparently, dragons who are heartbroken don't die of grief, the way homunculi do – instead, they become really, really dangerous. The species that Toothless and Furious belonged to are quite small when they hatch, but they grow huge enough to swallow ships – and, far from only breathing magic fire that cures illness and breaks enchantments, they can even breathe _exploding_ fire. So, if Toothless is still alive – who knows what he might be like by now?

All right. Perhaps my dream isn't just the result of me being jealous. But that doesn't mean it's likely to come true, either.

I just wish it hadn't felt so real.

(Evening) My first day of school has come and gone. It helped that, now the weather is cold enough for everyone to be wearing coats, I could crouch in my Master's jacket pocket, rather than having to squash into his bag among assorted textbooks, exercise books, pencil case, pocket calculator, and PE kit (plus the trusty penknife, torch and compass tucked into the inside pocket in case of emergencies).

On the walk to school, we met Ivan, and Miss Guinevere went on ahead with friends of her own to be out of the press of boys (Ivan's brother Josh seemed to be going to the school by a different route). We stopped at a small shop with jars of boiled sweets behind the counter, and shelves of everything else (chocolate bars and crisps, tinned foods, jars of instant coffee, cans of beer, and plastic toys) ranged around the shop. It was like a much smaller version of the big supermarkets like Lidl and Aldi, only without so many fresh vegetables or freshly-baked bread rolls. Here, there were only plastic bags containing sliced loaves.

After we'd wandered briefly round, my master went up to the counter, while Ivan stayed to look at the toys dangling from a stand at the back of the shop. Ivan kept calling out intermittently things like, 'Hey, Ben, d'you want a Halloween costume? D'you think a blue clown wig would suit me? Or a green one, then I could go as Atticus?'

My Master ignored him, as he was busy trying to negotiate with the shopkeeper:

'Please, can I have a hundred-gram bag of sherbert lemons and chocolate limes, mixed?'

The shopkeeper irritably glanced up. 'You want a hundred grams of sherbert lemons and a hundred bags of chocolate limes?'

'No, a hundred grams of both together, mixed, please.'

'I can't mix sweets.'

'But why not? They are the same price.'

'No they're not. We've got sweets with all different prices here. You see? Rhubarb and custard's £1 a hundred grams, fudge is £1.80 a hundred grams, flying saucers are £2.50 a hundred grams, Spanish gold's £1.40…'

'But sherbert lemons and chocolate limes are both £1 a hundred grams.'

'Yeah, that's right. So if I give you a hundred-gram bag of each, that'll be two quid, okay?'

'No, I have only one pound. I need the rest for my dinner money.'

'So, what d'you want? A bag of sherbert lemons, or a bag of chocolate limes?'

'A bag of both, mixed, please.'

'I can't mix sweets.'

At this point Ivan rejoined us. 'C'mon, let's go. You shouldn't be eating candy in school, anyway – it'll spoil your appetite for the _lovely_ food in the school canteen.'

'Have you seen anything that you want?' asked my Master.

'Not sure. It's a bit early to start shopping for Halloween – I might come back later.'

We arrived just in time for Personal Development Curriculum at twenty to nine. The teacher started by telling one boy to take his earrings out, reminding him that jewellery wasn't allowed in school, and neither was hair clipped into a Mohican and bleached white – 'and that applies to you, Meera, just as it does to Liam. Honestly, I thought the Last of the Mohicans died sometime in the 1980s! And, Shofiq, what did I say about wearing a school blazer and tie? _Not_ a baggy hoodie?'

'I have them on!' protested Shofiq. 'But it's f-freezing cold in here!'

'If you're cold, you can wear a V-necked jersey _under_ your blazer, the way the others are doing. _Not_ a hoodie on top. Graska, are trainers allowed in school?'

'No, miss,' mumbled Graska, through a mouthful of something.

'No, _Mrs Kaur_ , if you don't mind. And, may I remind you, neither is eating in class.'

'Mnot eating.'

'Well, chewing, then. What is it? Gum?' Graska nodded. 'Well, will you come and put it in the bin, then?'

'Why?'

'Because I don't like watching you sitting there with your jaw going up and down like a Victorian clockwork toy. Natalie! What is the school rule on phones?'

'I'll just be five minutes, Miss-is Kaur …'

'Natalie, this is a lesson. This part of the day is dedicated to your personal, moral, and social development…'

'Well, I'm on _social_ media, innit?' protested Natalie. 'An' I don't fink it's very _moral_ of you to try and stop me keepin' in touch wiv me uncle in Australia an' mum's cousin in Canada an' me dad in Malta an'...'

Mrs Kaur confiscated Natalie's phone (and a few others around the room) and Liam's earrings, reminding them to reclaim them from her at the end of the day, and put Graska's wad of gum in the bin, announced that she would phone Graska's mother about getting her some proper school shoes, and told Shofiq to hang his jacket over his chair till the end of the lesson. The lesson was on why it is wrong to treat people differently because of their appearance or the way they dress. Everyone burst out laughing. But by now it was nine o'clock, and time for English.

English (which seems to be for all pupils, not just those who don't speak English as a first language) mainly involves reading stories. At the moment, my Master's class are working through a book about a boy who could travel between different universes. 'Ben,' the teacher said, 'can you read Christopher today? And, Ivan, I'd like you to read a character called Tacroy whom we'll meet shortly. Now, who wants to read the bits in between?' Nobody volunteered. 'All right, I'll pick on someone. Shofiq, I'd like you to be the narrator from page 26 to the top of page 28, and then I'll choose someone else.'

By the end of the chapter, all the children were talking excitedly. Who was Tacroy? Why was he like a ghost when travelling between worlds, not solid like Christopher? And why did Christopher's Uncle Ralph want them to bring back dragon's blood?

The teacher wrote out the more interesting of these questions on the board. 'I'd like you to write down your ideas to each of those questions,' he said. 'You can discuss them in pairs first. And no, I don't want anyone reading on ahead, so I'm going to collect the books in now,' he added. 'Write about what you _think_ is happening. And for homework, I want you to write a story about where Christopher and Tacroy's next journey might take them.'

My Master and Ivan quickly decided that Uncle Ralph was up to no good – after all, who but an evil person would want to exploit dragons like that? They weren't sure about Tacroy, but agreed that they liked him enough to reserve judgment on whether he was a villain for the time being.

Next came ICT, with a lesson on how to use databases. I'd thought that being able to access the internet on a smartphone was exciting enough, but now I realised that I been using it only to read things (mostly Wikipedia, or popular science sites like 'What If?'). I hadn't even thought of something so obvious as creating a database to store information about different kinds of fantastic beings – something infinitely expandable in a way that Professor Greenbloom's scrapbooks of photographs, drawings and handwritten notes just aren't. I need to talk to him about that – and about whether there's some way of sending text and photographs from a phone to the database, without making them publicly available on the internet.

At break, my Master and Ivan went over to hang around outside the sixth-formers' building, which is a separate part of the school from the blocks for under-sixteens, to see whether they could catch sight of Atticus. There was no sign of him, and, when we went inside to ask, the woman on the reception desk said she hadn't seen him.

'Did he call in sick?' asked Ivan earnestly. 'Only we promised to meet up with him – it's part of this new pupil counselling programme, you see.'

'No, he hasn't deigned to tell us what the excuse is this time,' said the secretary. 'I expect he'll slope in sometime around lunchtime. I didn't know Atticus was a pupil counsellor, but, really, you could look for a better role model.'

'So, what happened on Friday?' asked Ivan as we left, to stand in a quiet part of the grounds where nobody was likely to notice if I put my head out to join in the conversation. 'Did you get him to eat garlic?'

'No, of course not!' said my Master indignantly. 'Just liver, and then chocolate torte. He has, uh…' he struggled to find the right English phrase, and turned to me, ' _Was heißt "erbrechen" auf Englisch?_ '

'He threw most of it up before he left,' I explained. 'It might be because he can't digest food, or because he'd had too much to drink, or both.'

'Do you think he is a vampire?' asked Ivan.

'Yes, we are all nearly sure,' said my Master. 'My parents were afraid he might be something worse – a Hollow or a Wight – but if he is only a vampire, it is equal.'

'Equal? You mean, he's just as bad as Hollows and Wights?' asked Ivan, confused.

'No,' I explained, 'my…' (he really doesn't like being described as my Master, but that's still how I think of him – though now less in the sense of being an owner, than someone who can teach me how to be a person) 'Ben means that the Professor and Professora don't mind that Atticus is a vampire, as long as he's not a bad person. I think they even feel sorry for him.'

'I can't imagine my dad feeling that way about a vampire. But then, I can't imagine him feeling it about a dragon, or…'

But at this time the bell rang for an RS lesson about the Buddhist Wheel of Life and the six realms one can be reincarnated in: humans, gods, angry gods, animals, hungry ghosts, and souls in hell. Humans are generally reckoned to have the best chance of reaching enlightenment, because they experience both happiness (unlike the souls in hell) and unhappiness (unlike the gods), are not wholly governed by greed (like the hungry ghosts) or aggression (like the angry gods), and have enough intelligence to understand what happens to them (unlike most animals). I wondered where on this wheel the Buddha would have placed homunculi, dragons and brownies – or vampires, for that matter.

PE came next, which gave me plenty of time to think as I waited in the changing-rooms while everyone played football. Mostly, I thought about different religions' attitudes to the afterlife. I remembered something that Mouse had said about Hollows, who eat Peculiar humans like Professor Greenbloom, and the Wights who serve the Hollows. He had heard a lot by eavesdropping on the conversations of the humans in Miss Peregrine's Loop, because nobody thought of him as a person enough to try to stop him listening. Miss Peregrine had explained that the Hollows were a group of Peculiars who had tried to make themselves immortal. Instead, they had turned themselves into monsters, possibly because they had regressed to a time before their souls were conceived (Miss Peregrine apparently did not believe that souls had existed forever, in one incarnation or another). They are possessed with the urge to hunt and kill Peculiars because, if they eat enough Peculiars, they can become Wights, who are nearly human enough to pass for normal humans.

Miss Peregrine had said that being a Hollow was hell, and being a Wight was purgatory. I'm not sure she was right about that. It's a while since I studied Christian theology, but I thought the point of purgatory is that it is _not_ the realm of the damned, but the realm of the saved who are not yet perfected enough to be able to enter into heaven. They experience suffering, yes, but it is the suffering of the hospital, not the torture chamber. They are there to be purified, not to be punished, and they endure it willingly because they know it will be worth it to be able to unlearn the wrong ways of thinking and feeling and behaving that had marred their earthly lives.

I wonder whether Buddhists, who believe that no-one goes to hell _permanently_ , believe something similar to the Christian doctrine of purgatory? Except that I don't think Buddhists believe in a God who loves us and wants to help us find redemption. They think we need to work it out on our own – but people can help each other, and even donate the good karma they have earned to other people.

Then we went into the canteen for lunch. My Master bought cottage pie, runner beans, and sweetcorn, and a currant bun for dessert, carefully putting the change back into his wallet. Ivan, behind him in the queue, sighed at the young man serving us. 'No burgers and chips _again_?'

'It's the healthy eating policy, mate. You get fish and chips once a week, on Friday.'

'Yeah, but what about burgers?'

'There's mince in the cottage pie. _And_ potato on top. Go on, try it.'

'Nah, I'll just have a bread roll. Gotta watch my figure.'

'Hey, you need to watch out you don't get anorexic.'

'I look okay, don't I? You Brits are always making out all Americans are obese, you should be glad one of us is a healthy weight.'

The server sighed. 'One wholemeal roll, then. 20p.'

We went over to a table, where my Master broke off a piece of currant bun and slipped it to me before making a start on his own meal.

'Do your family know you eat meat?' asked Ivan. 'They're vegetarian, right?'

'They are. So I am vegetarian when I am at home. They do not ask what I eat at school.'

'Yeah, neither does my dad!' said Ivan, with a burst of laughter. I could hear him unzipping his bag and bringing out rustling things which, as he opened the wrappers, I could smell to be chocolate bars, peanuts, and crisps. 'I just told him school meals cost £2 a day, so I needed a raise on my allowance to cover that. I didn't say I wouldn't get my food at the shops on the way to school.'

I was quite certain that Ivan had not bought anything on the way to school. There didn't seem to be a tactful way to ask, so I made do with a tactless one. There was a pen in the pocket, and a bus ticket. On the back of the bus ticket, I wrote, 'STEALING?' and poked it out of the gap in the top of the pocket. My Master read it, gave a small nod, and poked the scrap of paper back in. I wrote, 'AT THE SAME SHOP? EVERY DAY?' This time, my Master read it thoughtfully, and then pushed it across to Ivan.

'Oh, come _on_!' snapped Ivan. 'You lived on the streets for years – you must've had to steal to survive, didn't you?'

'Yes, but I went not to the same shop, at the same time every day,' my Master pointed out, with a note of caution in his voice that I had almost never heard before.

'It won't be much longer,' said Ivan. 'Just until I can get the bus fare to somewhere a long way from anywhere. I didn't know how crowded this stupid little island was! I need to be somewhere no-one'll notice when a beautiful, big blue dragon swoops in to give me a ride. And then, when I'm travelling with Issiah, I really will need to steal – he may be able to live on moonlight, but I can't. This is just practice.'

My Master slipped the scrap of paper back to me, and I wrote in the remaining space, 'DOES HE NEED TO? RIM OF HEAVEN CHRISTMAS.'

My Master read it. 'You have right!' he whispered to me. 'Ivan, in the Christmas holidays go we to the Rim of Heaven. You could come with us, and from there call Issiah. He might be happy, with other dragons to meet.'

'That's _ten weeks_ ,' said Ivan bleakly. 'Ten more weeks of living with my dad.'

'Or half-term?' suggested my Master. 'In two weeks have we half-term. Maybe could we then… maybe we could go to Scotland then,' he corrected himself. 'Finally, if you become caught stealing, your dad will watch you like a jailer.'

'Two weeks of being a good boy?' said Ivan dubiously. 'Uh – I'll think about it. But you know what it's like to need to run away, don't you? Don't _you?_ '

Given that modern English doesn't use the singular 'thou', I think he meant that we both knew how it felt. We did, of course. Ivan's father doesn't seem to be a monster who might gobble him up, like Nettlebrand, but he might be just as unpleasant as Mr Foulweather, who had been once my Master's foster carer.

After lunch came Maths, and then Science (finding out what happens to a strong acid when you add a strong alkali to it, one tiny drop at a time). The science teacher started off by telling the children what they were supposed to be finding out, then asked them to write down what they predicted would happen, then let them do the experiment, and then explained why the strong acid had stayed a strong acid for so long, then briefly jumped to being neutral, then to a strong alkali. She explained what a strong acid actually _is_ , in terms of atomic structure. Humans these days really do seem to have turned alchemy into a science.

School is fascinating. I wonder whether Ivan will miss it, when he runs away. He doesn't sound as though he thinks he'll miss much else about his life here – except, perhaps, having a human friend who understands how he feels about dragons. Unless, of course, they decide to run away together.

What if my dream really _does_ come true?


	8. Chapter 8

Tuesday 13th October 2018

Today's walk to school started off the same way as yesterday, until we reached the shop. We began by wandering around to the back section, as yesterday, and while Ivan and my Master were laughing over the assortment of unicorn-themed toys (including a rubber duck with a unicorn's head), I heard footsteps approaching. Before I had time to shout out a warning, the shopkeeper grabbed the two boys, one in each hand, and said, 'You two. Come to the front. Now.'

At the front of the shop, he pressed a bell on his desk, and an assistant – probably his wife – emerged from the storeroom upstairs.

'I think we've caught them this time,' the man said. 'All right, lads, let's see what you've nicked today.'

While the man held onto the two boys by their shirt collars, his wife searched through their bags. I stayed hidden in my Master's coat pocket, trying not to let so much as my hair stick out over the top. Fortunately, there was a worn patch in the cloth where I could peer through. Ivan's bag contained nothing except schoolbooks and stationery, his wallet, a mobile phone, a litter of sweet wrappers, a jam-jar half filled with some kind of sauce, and a plastic tub with half a red pepper, a couple of inches of cucumber, a few cabbage leaves, and a few baby corncobs and mange tout peas inside it.

'What's this? Your packed lunch?' sneered the man.

'Ingredients for Home Economics. We're making stir-fry.'

Since most of the vegetables had obviously been prepared at home, and the shop didn't sell mangetout peas or miniature corncobs, the shopkeepers couldn't accuse him of stealing anything. Instead, the woman searched my Master's bag, which also contained schoolbooks and stationery, a wallet, a pebble, a shell – and, in the hidden pocket at the back, a small reel of string, a torch, a compass, and a penknife.

'So – carrying a concealed weapon, eh?' said the man. 'I'm afraid we're going to have to ring the police about this. Can you ring them while you mind the shop, love?' he asked his wife. 'I need to stop this little thug getting away. And you'd better get on your way before you're late for school,' he added to Ivan. 'I'd keep out of the way of this lad in future, if I were you. And don't you think _either_ of you is coming in my shop again!'

He held my Master's hands behind his back and pushed him upstairs to the store-room, keeping him there until the police arrived. They were a man and woman who didn't look particularly threatening – they didn't seem to be carrying guns or any other weapons that I could see – and the man chuckled gently when he saw the situation. 'Is this your teenage gangster?' he asked. 'I'd swear criminals look younger every year!'

'He was carrying a knife!' snapped the shopkeeper. 'Him and his little mate' (I wondered how the shopkeeper had noticed I was there, before I realised he was talking about Ivan) 'have been coming into this shop every morning since the start of term, and they never buy nothing, but there's always stuff gone missing, and now this one's taken to carrying a knife. My wife's got it with the rest of his stuff downstairs.'

'Is this true?' the policewoman asked my Master. 'Did you have a knife?'

My Master was so panic-stricken by this point that he forgot all his English, and could only mutter miserably, ' _Ich weiß es nicht_.' ['I don't know!']

'Bloody immigrants!' spat the shopkeeper. 'Come the referendum, we'll leave the EU and we can send them – uh – no offence, I'm not trying to send _you_ back to Europe…'

'Or Afghanistan?' suggested the policeman, laughing. 'That's where my parents came from, after all. You've got to admit, that's integration!' he added to his white colleague. 'People take one look at my brown skin, and immediately think, "European!"'

The policewoman seemed to share his low opinion of the shopkeeper, but felt that she ought to do something. 'We'd better take him to the station,' she said. 'I'm sure we can find someone to translate for the lad there.'

'Aren't you going to search him first?' asked the shopkeeper indignantly.

'We can't until we can tell him what we're doing and why. If he doesn't speak English…'

'Hah! He was chatting away merrily until you arrived. He's just playing dumb now.'

So the two officers introduced themselves, showing cards to prove that they really did come from the police station, and then the policeman said, as slowly and clearly as he could, 'Now, you've been caught carrying a knife. Do you understand?'

My Master managed to whisper, 'Yes.'

'We need to search you, to see whether you are carrying any more weapons. Do you understand that?'

'Yes.'

'First, I need you to take your coat off. You can let go of his hands, sir,' he added to the shopkeeper.

'No!' yelped the shopkeeper, who seemed to have convinced himself that he really was clinging on for dear life to a homicidal maniac.

'No!' screamed my Master. I was crouching in the pocket – and the police must have noticed the bulge in the side.

'Well, if you won't help me, I'll need to take it off for you,' said the policeman. He peeled off the coat (finally managing to convince the shopkeeper to let go of my Master) and lifted up the coat to examine it. I managed to avoid dropping out head-first by clinging tightly to the pocket lining.

'What's this, then?' said the policeman, when he discovered me while searching the coat a moment later.

I managed not to meet my Master's eye. I had been mistaken for a robot before – I could make it work for me this time. 'Translation service available,' I said, in the most electronic-sounding voice I could manage. 'Select language, please.'

' _Fliegenbein, was machst du?_ ' ['Twigleg, what are you doing?']

'Translation service available. Select language, please,' I repeated.

' _Uh, würdest du aus dem Deutschen ins Englische übersetzen, bitte?_ ' ['Would you translate from German into English, please?']

'German to English selected,' I said.

'Huh, we didn't have gadgets like this when I was a kid,' muttered the policeman. 'Modern parents spoil their children.'

' _Wir hatten solche Geräte nicht, als ich Kind war_ ,' I translated. ' _Moderne Eltern verwöhnen ihre Kinder_.'

With me as a translator, things moved a bit more smoothly. The police explained to my Master that they needed to take him to the police station, and, once there, they gave him a cup of hot chocolate and questioned him further. He answered rather haltingly, even in German, because he was so frightened, and I translated into rather more fluent English. After they had taken down his name and address and the names of his foster parents, his school, and his social worker, they asked him again about the knife.

While we were travelling across the world, I had seen my Master use his knife fairly often: to dig a hole in the ground, cut fallen branches into the right sizes to build a shelter, open a can of food that didn't come with a ring-pull, or cut twigs to leave markers if we needed to retrace our steps. I had never known him to use it as a weapon (not that it would have been much use against a roc or Nettlebrand anyway). He explained this, adding that no, there was no particular reason why he needed it at school, but it was just something he always took with him. No, he wasn't being bullied; no, he wasn't part of a gang.

'Have you been in any kind of fight?' asked the policewoman.

My Master tried to work out an answer that was true without being misleading, as he didn't stand much chance of explaining about Nettlebrand. 'I haven't been in a fight since I came to live with Barnabas and Vita and Guinevere,' he said.

'You said you were homeless, before you met your foster carers,' said the policewoman. 'Did you ever feel frightened and vulnerable, then?'

'Sometimes.'

'Were you on your own? Or did you have friends – other homeless people, maybe?'

'I was on my own when I lived in an abandoned factory in Hamburg. Then I made friends with some people who were looking for somewhere to live, and the factory was demolished, so they let me come with them.'

'Were they the same age as you? Or older?'

'A bit older, I suppose. But still quite young.'

'Did you ever get into fights when you were with them?'

'Well, sometimes. If we were attacked. But I haven't been in a fight since coming to England, and I certainly don't fight people at school!' He was becoming very indignant and upset by now. I had to keep my voice expressionless and electronic-sounding as I translated, to maintain the fiction that I was just a machine.

The police officers discussed this, and then the policeman went off to make some phone calls, and came back and they discussed it some more. Eventually the policewoman said, 'Well, since you've been so honest, we might let you off with a caution, instead of prosecuting you. We wouldn't normally do this, because carrying a knife is a very serious crime, especially when you're only twelve years old. Still, it seems you didn't seem to intend to hurt anyone, and we couldn't find any traces of blood on the knife to suggest that you ever had hurt anyone. We've talked to your foster family, and your school and your social worker, and they all say you're a good boy who's never caused any trouble before. Now, your foster dad is coming here to pick you up, and we'll need to ask him some questions, as well.'

The policewoman paused to let me translate, and then went on: 'You're not going to be prosecuted, but we do need to keep a record of what happened. That means that from now on, you've got a criminal record, and if you're ever caught breaking the law again, we can refer back to it. When you're a grown-up, if you apply for a job, we won't usually need to tell your employers, but if you apply for a job like being a teacher or caring for old people, we will have to warn whoever wants to employ you. That doesn't mean that people _won't_ employ you; only that they need to know.'

It seemed to take hours until Professor Greenbloom arrived, although in fact it was less than half an hour. In the meantime, the police officers kept on lecturing my Master about why carrying a penknife was such a terrible crime. 'Quite apart from the fact that it's illegal, if you carry a knife, even if you don't plan to use it, it'll make other people more likely to attack _you_. There's a saying you should bear in mind: "Carry a knife, and lose your life."'

It isn't easy to translate poetry on the spur of the moment. The best I could come up with was, ' _Falls man ein Messer trägt, dann ist man bald tot._ ' ['If one carries a knife, one is soon dead.']

When Professor Greenbloom was finally there, the policewoman had to question him, too: 'Were you aware that your foster son had a knife?'

'A knife?' The Professor looked startled, and then, as the policeman showed him the penknife, he nodded with understanding. 'Oh, that. Yes, we spent some time camping in the summer holidays.'

The policewoman stared at him. 'You _allowed_ him to carry a knife?'

'Well, it's a useful piece of equipment to have in the woods. I didn't think he'd be silly enough to try to bring it to school, but I'm sure he didn't think of it as a weapon. When you were a child, didn't you ever try to whittle bits of wood into sculptures, or cut reeds into whistles?' The policewoman looked stony-faced and baffled, though the brown policeman smiled. 'No? That's sad. I thought all children did.'

'Mr Greenbloom, with respect, this isn't a _Just William_ story. Ben is a former street child with a history of violence.' The Professor looked startled at that, until the policewoman continued, 'He told us himself – through his electronic translator there,' (she gestured to me, and Professor Greenbloom managed to nod without seeming too surprised) 'that he had been part of a gang with older teenagers or adults who sometimes got into fights.'

'Oh. Yes, I think I've met the people you're talking about. Well, at the time Ben was with them, they were being hunted by an extremist – one of these fanatics who thinks he has a God-given mission to murder certain minority groups. I had a run-in with him myself once, and only barely got away. He's changed – he's a completely different person these days – but at the time, I expect Ben and his friends did the minimum they needed to, in order to defend themselves. They're not violent people by nature, and Ben certainly isn't. In fact, he's one of the kindest, most helpful children I've ever met. We certainly haven't had any problems in the time he's been living with us – and that's been over two months, now.'

'Well, it's not uncommon for children to go through what's called a honeymoon period, when they first come into care,' pointed out the policeman. 'If Ben does have any behavioural problems, this is about when we'd first expect to see them. _Had_ you noticed any problems, just lately?'

'No, not at all.'

'Other people had,' put in the policewoman. 'The shopkeeper who alerted us said that Ben and another child had been coming into his shop repeatedly without buying anything, and that he suspected them of shoplifting. Do you allow your son to walk to school alone?'

'Well, with his sister – that is, my daughter, Guinevere. The school they go to is only a mile away, so it's a good way for them to get some fresh air and exercise.'

'Doesn't the school have sports facilities?' asked the policewoman, in such a controlled voice that I couldn't be sure whether she was being sarcastic. 'Children nowadays shouldn't need to get their exercise _on the street_!' The policeman looked as though he thought she was being ridiculous, but didn't want to undermine her by arguing with her in front of members of the public.

'Oh, come on, it's a good way for them to learn responsibility,' said the Professor. 'Guinevere's been making her own way to school since she was eight.'

'It's not a bad idea for children who've always had a supportive family,' said the policeman. 'But for someone like Ben, who's used to having to fend for himself, it's best if you put some boundaries in place until he feels secure – drive him to and from school or walk with him, or get a neighbour to do it if you and your wife both have to work, and obviously, don't let him out of the house without an adult at other times, or leave him unattended. Have you talked to his social worker about this?'

'Not yet, but I'll call her as soon as I've taken Ben to school. I'm very sorry about this – I realise I must have been very naïve not to see it coming.'

'Well, it's your first time fostering, isn't it?' said the policeman. 'Everybody makes mistakes.'

The policewoman read out a 'Caution', which said much the same things she had already said to my Master, and then she, my Master and Professor Greenbloom all had to sign a form, after which she gave us a written copy of what she had said, and we were free to go.


	9. Chapter 9

Tuesday 13th October 2018 (continued)

When we'd left the police station, Professor Greenbloom drove us to the school, where the headteacher met us with a letter informing us that my Master was to be suspended. I felt terrified – would they really hang a child just for having a penknife in his bag? – and my Master just looked confused, but the Professor took it calmly. 'I see,' he said. 'What about his schoolwork?'

'We'll email you with a schedule of what he should be getting on with this week, if you or your wife can take time off work to supervise him,' said the headteacher, sounding as if she had to deal with this sort of situation a lot. 'After that, we can put you in touch with a pupil referral unit to arrange full-time education for him. Now, obviously, we'll need you to keep Ben to the same routine of getting up and studying and going to bed that he would be following if he was in school, so that it doesn't feel like a holiday for him. But right now, I think it's best if the two of you go home, wait until you're both calm, and then talk about what happened, and why carrying weapons is never right.'

'Understood,' said Professor Greenbloom. 'Is there anything else we need to collect?'

The headteacher considered. 'Well, most of the textbooks are handed out at the start of term. Ben, can you think of anything you need?'

My Master managed to say, 'The book that we in English read. I have no copy. Can I… _was heißt "leihen"?_ '

'"Borrow",' said Professor Greenbloom.

'Can I borrow _The Lives of Christopher Chant_ , please? I want to know what happens.'

The headteacher looked as if she was torn between trying to be stern, and being pleased that a child was so enthusiastic about a book. 'I'll have to ask the English department,' she said. 'If we give you one to take home, there might not be enough to go round all the other classes that are reading it. But if we can spare one, we'll send it to you. If not, you could ask your foster parents to take you to the library, to see if there's a copy there. If they don't have that particular one – well, I happen to know that Diana Wynne Jones has written over forty books, including at least seven in the Chrestomanci series, so I'm sure you'll be able to find some that you like.'

I felt like wailing, 'But I want to finish _this_ one! I want to find out what happens to Christopher, and I want to know who Tacroy is when he isn't spirit-travelling!' I think my Master felt the same way, but he said meekly, 'Yes, Miss – I mean, yes, Mrs Chaudhury.'

We went home, and I helped my Master with a page of algebra problems while Professor Greenbloom rang the university to explain why he needed to take time off work. Helping with maths work turned out to be surprisingly difficult, because I could see the answers instantly. The alchemist who created me had, as a learned scientist, decided to use westernised Arabic numerals instead of Roman numerals, so I was quite used to them, and these problems looked fairly simple to solve. So it took a lot of effort to explain _how_ to work out the answers, instead of simply giving away what the answers were.

We had lunch, and then it was time for Professor Greenbloom to ask the really awkward questions: 'Ben, I realise taking a penknife to school was just an innocent mistake, and the police overreacted. But – they said that the shopkeeper thought you and a friend had been stealing from his shop. Were you?'

He was speaking in German, using the plural _ihr_ , and my Master could hardly pretend to think that his foster-father was addressing him with the ultra-deferential _Ihr_ , the way I do. (Nobody seems to use that these days, but I can't get out of the habit – _du_ sounds much too disrespectful, and addressing someone as _Sie_ , which means 'they', just sounds strange to me.) He couldn't just say that, no, _he_ hadn't been stealing (evading the fact that his job was to distract the shopkeeper while Ivan stole things). Instead, he said reluctantly, 'Yes, we were.'

'What were you stealing?'

'Food.'

'But – but I give you your dinner-money every day! Don't you like the school meals?'

'Yes – it was – just to save money – I won't do it again – I'm sorry.'

'Ben,' said the Professor, 'I know that in the past, you might have had to steal to survive. But you don't need to do that now. Vita and I are here to look after you and make sure you have food and clothes and everything you need. You do understand that, don't you?'

'Yes.'

'Do you have any of the money you were "saving" by not buying school meals?'

'No.'

'Well – I think you need to work out how much you owe that shopkeeper. Then we can go and pay him the money back, and I'll take it out of your pocket money until it's paid off. Does that sound reasonable to you?'

'I suppose so.'

I could understand that my Master didn't want Ivan to get into trouble, but this seemed so unfair that I had to say something, even if I couldn't think of a tactful way to put it. 'Sir,' I said, 'when you – when we met you in Egypt, and you gave us food for the journey– well – didn't you have to steal some of it from your colleagues?'

'Oh, goodness, I did, didn't I?' groaned the Professor. 'I really haven't been setting a very good example. It isn't something I'd do normally, if you hadn't needed to go off so urgently to talk to Asif and then find the Rim of Heaven, but that's no excuse. Maybe I ought to be the one to pay the money back to the shopkeeper, as it was partly my fault.'

'Maybe we should pay half each?' suggested my Master.

They agreed on that, and then we went back to studying. Professor Greenbloom checked his emails and printed out a list of the work that my Master was supposed to be doing this week. There was a history assignment on the impact of horseshoes, the horse collar, and three-field crop rotation on mediaeval agriculture. Even though I was created in what might as well have been the Middle Ages (technically, it was the Reformation, but my creator was far more interested in hunting dragons and making gold than in some ex-monk criticising the Pope and translating the Bible into German), I didn't know much about farming. This probably meant that I was able to be of more use than on the maths assignment, since, instead of struggling not to give away the answers, I was able to help look for books and websites where we might find useful information.

At half past three, Miss Guinevere arrived home from school, accompanied by Ivan, who was carrying a copy of _The Lives Of Christopher Chant_. 'You've got the whole school convinced we're in the middle of a crime wave,' he announced cheerfully. 'They took away _everyone's_ bag and searched them. They've still got my cellphone, except that it isn't even mine, it's my dad's, and he's gonna hit the roof when he finds out, 'cause he told me not to get caught with it.'

'Why not?' my Master asked. Phones might not be allowed in school, at least if children were playing with them in lessons, but they were hardly a dangerous weapon.

'Cause he wanted me to try and take a picture of Atticus, that's why. He made me promise to follow him into the bathroom…'

'But we have no baths at school,' pointed out my Master, 'only the showers in the PE block.'

'Oh, don't be so literal, you know I mean the can. They've got _mirrors_ there, right? I was supposed to see if he's got a reflection, then take a picture and see if he shows up in the photograph. That way, if we've got a photo of a guy with no reflection, we can prove he's a vampire, and if he doesn't show up in the mirror _or_ on camera, that tells us something new about vampires.'

'That's not fair on Atticus,' protested Miss Guinevere. 'Anyway, why's your dad making _you_ do all this?'

'Well, he's got no excuse to prowl round our school taking pictures of students, does he? He's an adult' (Ivan pronounced it with the stress on the second syllable, like aDULTery), 'and they can get into real bad trouble, taking photos of kids, and even if Atticus isn't really a kid any more, he's still in high school. One of my dad's friends used to be a biology teacher, but he got banned from working with kids after another teacher caught him taking photos of a nine-year-old boy turning into a werewolf. Someone stole his cellphone and deleted the picture to try to stop him posting it online, but he'd already sent my dad a copy.'

'This biology teacher – was he called Mr Foulweather?' asked my Master.

Ivan shrugged. 'Can't remember. Yeah, I think it was something like that. Why?'

'He was my foster-carer, before I ran away,' explained my Master. 'He was the reason I ran away.'

'So your dad's trying to get away with something illegal by making you do it for him, and Ben gets arrested just for having a penknife?' said Miss Guinevere.

'Yeah. _And_ all the lessons get rearranged,' said Ivan. 'On Friday they _told_ us to bring along vegetables that needed chopping, not pre-shredded ones, because we were gonna have a lesson on how to use kitchen-knives safely. We had a worksheet on what colour chopping-boards to use for what foods. And now, suddenly all the knives and chopping-boards have disappeared, and it's, "Sorry, we can't let you chop vegetables because we don't have enough food-processors to go round, so guess what, kids, today we're making chocolate Rice Krispie cakes!" Like they think we're still in kindergarten or something!'

'Grown-ups are weird,' said Miss Guinevere. 'Oh well, Rice Krispie cakes are quite nice. How many did you make?'

'About a dozen,' said Ivan. 'I've got…' (he reached into his bag, and drew out a plastic tub, minus bits of vegetables) 'one left.'

' _One?_ ' said Miss Guinevere.

'Well, I had to have something for lunch. Okay, I won't be greedy – we can share the last one.' Ivan broke the cluster of chocolate and puffed rice into three roughly even-sized bits, and a crumb for me. 'So, are you coming back tomorrow?' he asked, when he had finished his share of the snack, and licked the last smudges of chocolate off the paper case.

'I can't,' said my Master. 'I am – hung until the end of term.'

'And I'm running away at half-term,' said Ivan. 'You can understand why now, can't you?'

We all agreed that we could.

'Oh well, at least I can come here after school,' said Ivan. 'And we can go out at weekends – or are you grounded?'

My Master looked puzzled. 'Like an aeroplane?'

'He means, not allowed to go out,' explained Miss Guinevere.

'I think so,' said my Master. 'The police said that Barnabas should not let me walk to school, or leave the house ever unless he is with me.'

'What? Walking to school is a crime now? I'll tell my dad he'd better hire a taxi, else the cops'll probably shoot me!'

'It's not a joke!' shouted Miss Guinevere. 'Because Ben's been in trouble, the police will be telling Social Services that mum and dad can't cope with him, and if they don't do _exactly_ what they're told and keep their eyes on him all the time, they might not be allowed to look after him any more, let alone adopt him! Even before this, the social worker thought we were weird for having six cats, because all the brownies have to look like cats when she comes to visit, and she definitely thinks it's creepy that Ben's allowed to share my bedroom.'

'What? Where's he supposed to sleep?' asked Ivan. 'In a cupboard under the stairs, like Harry Potter?'

'I think there's space in the basement for a human-sized bed, if someone could rearrange the bookshelves a bit,' I suggested. 'I don't really need all that space to myself, and – well – sometimes it feels a bit lonely. So if you'd like to move in…'

My Master laughed. 'Twigleg, I'd love to. I thought you'd never ask!'

Ivan laughed, too. 'And if the social worker thinks your parents are perverts for letting you share a room with your sister, what's she gonna say about you sharing with an a-DULT who's four hundred years older than you, emotionally dependent on you, and likes sitting on your lap?'

'That's all right,' I said. 'She can check with the police. They think I'm a robot.'

Ivan snorted with laughter. 'What? Why?'

'Because I told them I was,' I explained.

So I'm crouching on the kitchen table to write this, while the humans rearrange the furniture down below. I'll have to get out of the habit of writing my diary last thing at night, into the small hours of the morning, now that I have a room-mate who needs to go to sleep at a sensible time. But on the other hand – we might have time to read each other another chapter of _Christopher Chant_ before we turn the lights out.


	10. Chapter 10

Wednesday 14th October 2015

We had a phone call around lunchtime today from Mouse (we had lent him and Lola the phone that I had been using for accessing the internet, so that they could contact us to report on how things were going). Professor Greenbloom took the call, but put his phone on 'speaker' so that my Master and I could hear.

'I tried to call you earlier, but it wouldn't work until Hothbrodd went off into the woods,' Mouse explained. 'Lola showed me how to use the phone, but she says trolls interfere with radio reception.'

'When did you find him?' asked the Professor.

'Yesterday evening. He swore a lot in Norwegian when we told him we needed him to rescue a dragon in Scotland, but when Lola said we'd come from you, he said he supposed he owed you one. What does that mean?'

'Oh, it doesn't matter. We're old friends, but he doesn't want people to think he's soft. So, has he got any ideas?'

'He's going to build an aeroplane big enough to carry a dragon. He says it's going to take him ages because he can't just ask just any kinds of trees to grow plank-shaped branches to make into an aircraft – it has to be the stealth birches.'

'What is a stealth birch?' my Master whispered to me.

'I don't know,' I said. 'They're not mentioned in any of the tree books, and I've never seen one.'

Professor Greenbloom laughed. 'That's how they've survived so long!' he said. 'They don't mind extruding a limb here and there for a good friend like Hothbrodd, but if they see a woodcutter looking for someone to chop down for furniture or firewood, they just – arrange not to be noticed. Nobody – well, no human anyway – knows how they do it, because no researcher who was trying to answer the question could find any stealth birches to experiment on.'

'And they can grow plank-shaped branches?' asked my Master. 'How long does that take?'

'If Hothbrodd asks them nicely, possibly within a day or two.'

'Does Hothbrodd ever ask _anyone_ nicely?' asked Mouse, at the other end of the phone.

'Oh, he gets on perfectly well with trees,' said the Professor. 'He just isn't keen on humans – or mountain trolls, of course.'

'But isn't Hothbrodd a troll, too?' asked Mouse.

'Yes, but the different species don't always have much in common. For example, fjord trolls like Hothbrodd have a plant metabolism, which is why they're most active in daylight, when mountain trolls are silicon-based, which means they can't operate at high temperatures and prefer to be awake at night, when it's cooler. That's why mountain trolls are more active in winter, too, unlike moomins, who hibernate then. Different species of troll vary far more than different species of kobold, and they don't always get on with each other – not that any species is exactly evil. Even the ones who lurk on internet forums aren't all vicious monsters who want to hurt people – some are just mischievous, and enjoy posting silly comments to see whether anyone will respond.'

Mouse didn't know much about the details, and was more interested in talking about how exciting it was being with Lola, and how she had been explaining to him how her miniature plane worked, and he was hoping she might teach him how to fly it. However, he thought that Hothbrodd was likely to have his stealth-birch aeroplane ready in a couple of weeks, so that he should be able to fly over to Scotland without being seen, collect Slatebeard and take him back to Norway, by the end of the month.

'And the last week in the month is half-term,' Professor Greenbloom reminded my Master, when Mouse had rung off. 'I know your school wants me to keep you to a regular routine while you're suspended, but they can hardly complain if I take you and Guinevere on a camping trip at half-term, can they?'

'Can Ivan come, too?'

'Of course¸ if he wants to. It might feel a bit lonely for Guinevere being the only girl – I'm afraid Vita won't be able to get time off work – but she could always ask one of her friends if they want to come along. Though admittedly, I don't know whether many of Guinevere's school-friends are interested in dragons.'

'Can _you_ take that much time off work?' my Master asked.

'Oh, yes – the university offered me compassionate leave until the end of term, just in case there isn't a pupil referral unit that has a place for you. Either they think all foster children are tearaways who need constant supervision, or it's a convenient way for them to get rid of me for most of a term.'

'What? Why would they want to get rid of you?'

'Well – because they think I'm a bit strange for insisting that dragons and sphinxes and gorgons really exist. Some of the students have been complaining that my lectures are useless, because they don't tell them the answers they need to write their end-of-term essays and pass exams. Honestly, I'd be willing to give up mentioning dragons – well, during lectures, anyway – if I could only get my students to see that education is about learning to think and wonder and question the received wisdom, not just about collecting the pieces of information they need to pass the next exam!'

My Master didn't look as if he had taken much of this in. 'It isn't because we're German, is it?' he asked.

'What? Why would that make a difference?'

'Well, the shopkeeper yesterday said to the policeman that they were going to have a referendum and send all the immigrants back to Europe. The policeman thought it was funny, because he's not from Europe, he's from Afghanistan. But I thought Britain was _in_ Europe. So how can we go back to Europe?'

Professor Greenbloom looked as if this was such a complicated question that he didn't know which bit of it to answer first. 'Well, a lot of the countries of Europe are in a group called the European Union,' he said. 'Do you know what that means?'

'I thought it meant everyone in Europe uses the same money. But British people don't. So is Britain not part of the European Union?'

'No, Britain _is_ in the European Union at the moment, but it just isn't one of the countries that use Euros. But being in the EU means we've all signed up to various agreements about trading with each other, and people being allowed to live and work wherever they want within the EU without needing passports or visas or work permits,' he said. 'But then, there are also some European countries, like Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, and Switzerland, who _aren't_ members of the EU, but they still have arrangements that people from those countries can work in EU countries without needing work permits. So if Britain does decide to leave the EU, it doesn't really mean that it's going to be cut off and that nobody can trade or travel or anything.'

'But would it mean you and Vita lose your jobs?'

'I can't see any logical reason why it should,' said the Professor. 'Lots of the people who teach at the university aren't from anywhere in Europe, let alone from EU countries – they're from Africa and Asia, North America or South America or Australia. So the only way that it could make a difference would be if lots of people in Britain voted to leave the EU – which different people might do for different reasons – and then the British government assumed that _everyone_ who voted to leave was someone who hated immigrants, like that shopkeeper, and then the government decided to do what it thought people wanted by making life as hard as possible for everyone who isn't British. So, no, I don't think that's likely to happen. But if it does…'

'We'll find somewhere else to live, like the dragons!' said my Master excitedly. 'Could we go to the Rim of Heaven? If we all go, not just me, then Firedrake can't say I need to be back with my own kind, can he?'

'Well – I wouldn't mind leaving this country,' said the Professor, 'but I don't know much about the Rim of Heaven. Obviously, you've been there and I haven't, but how easy would it be for humans to keep warm and find food, for example?'

'I don't know. The Dubidai grow mushrooms in the caves, but I mainly just lived on the food the monks had given us. And it _was_ fairly cold, even with the warm clothes they lent us. It was worse for Twigleg, because he's so small. But it wasn't too bad as long as we were cuddled up against Firedrake.'

I imagined what the Rim of Heaven would be like when all the petrified dragons were revived and all the Scottish dragons had moved in. Fifty dragons, all of whom had flame that could break enchantments and turn me back into an insect at any moment. Firedrake and Maia might remember to be careful, but what were the chances that _everyone_ would? Especially when they started having children – I don't know at what age dragonets first start breathing fire. But it wouldn't be fair on my Master to mention this – after all, how is he supposed to cope with having friends who are dragons, and another friend to whom dragons are potentially lethal?

'Are you all right, Twigleg?' he asked. 'Worrying about how you're going to put up with Sorrel and the other brownies?'

'Something like that,' I said.

Actually, I'm getting used to brownies. When we read the next chapter of _The Lives of Christopher Chant_ to each other, and got to the temple full of sacred cats, and the girl who claims to be the Goddess – then first Billy, followed by Robbie, and then all six brownies, came to listen. I think they approved of Throgmorten, because he's vicious and doesn't let humans boss him around. By the end of the chapter, they were eagerly asking questions about what had happened before Chapter Four, and who Christopher's uncle who kept being mentioned was, and why he was sending Christopher and Tacroy on these journeys to other worlds.

'Could some of you take over reading?' I asked. We had shared out the reading so that my Master read Christopher's lines and I read the narration _and_ all the other characters – first Christopher's governess, then Tacroy, and then the Goddess, not to mention Throgmorten's furious yowling – and my voice was starting to feel tired.

Most of the brownies looked blank. Most of them didn't seem to have heard of reading, and Billy snorted, 'Who'd want to read something a _human_ wrote?'

But Blue said, 'If I read, can you count it as my good turn for the day?'

'That's not a bad idea,' I said.

'Who do you want me to read? Tacroy?'

' _No!_ ' I said, so vehemently that I was surprised. I didn't know why I cared, except that Tacroy was my favourite character and I didn't want his lines to come out of Blue's mouth. 'I tell you what…' (I scanned hastily through the pages to see which characters were in Chapter Five), 'if you could read Christopher's uncle, and his mother, I'll read his governess, and his father, and then Tacroy. And, Mas– I mean, Ben – please could you read the narrative, as well as Christopher's lines? He doesn't have a lot to say for the first part of this chapter, but the story is told from his point of view, so it makes sense to have the same person reading Christopher's thoughts and experiences.'

'Yes, that's fine,' said my Master, but the other brownies were protesting: 'What about us? How come Blue gets to do his good turn just by _reading_ , instead of washing up or peeling potatoes? Aren't we doing just as good turns by listening and discussing it with you?'

'No, you're not!' protested Blue. 'Are they?' he demanded of my Master.

My Master considered. 'Well – maybe we can say everyone else is doing half a good turn,' he suggested. 'So I'll do half of your work in return.'

I wanted to help, too – I might not be strong enough to lift an iron, or tall enough to reach into the washing machine and unload clothes, but there's no reason why I couldn't at least kneel on the kitchen table and hold down a potato between my knees and one arm while peeling it with the other hand. But my Master said that I'd done more than enough work in helping him with _all_ his lessons, not just reading, and anyway they only had two peelers, one for him and one for Bwbach, so I ought to take a break. So I'm writing this.


	11. Chapter 11

Friday 16th October 2015

The last three days have been wonderful, in most respects. Since the start of term, I'd been so busy, first with the Tree People and then with Mouse, that I didn't even notice how much I missed spending time with my Master, until we had the chance to be together all the time. Now that we can be together all the time, I'm going to miss him when he starts at the Pupil Referral Unit next week. Even if I hide in his bag or pocket again, it won't be the same as actually reading and studying together.

We've got into a routine of getting up and going for a short walk to replace the walk to school, before starting on school-work. Since Professor Greenbloom isn't supposed to let my Master out alone any more, either he or the Professora (on days when she doesn't have to start work early) comes with us. Usually, we go for a walk round a park somewhere. The weather is turning frosty in the mornings, so that my Master can put the hood on his jacket up without attracting too much attention, and I can crouch inside the baggy hood and whisper into his ear. It feels like all those morality pictures of someone with a good angel, representing his conscience, whispering into his right ear, and the devil whispering into his left. Except that if anything, my Master has been my good angel. I hope this doesn't mean I'm his bad angel.

I'm still learning the names of the trees, in English and German as well as Latin. Of course, a lot of them don't have leaves on any more, but some of those that do are turning wonderful shades of red or gold, and of those that don't, there are usually fallen seeds on the ground. I've memorised as many as possible from the tree book, but if I don't recognise something, I can whisper to my Master to ask, and he can repeat the question to the Professor.

It's wonderful to be able to go out, and it seems ungrateful to wish that we weren't living in a big town full of humans, where I have to hide. But we saw so many kinds of landscape on the journey in the summer, from European mountains to deserts with valleys of oasis to sea to Asian mountains – that I feel curious to see where everywhere else looks like.

Professor Greenbloom says he doesn't blame me. 'I wish I lived in somewhere that wasn't a city, too,' he said, when I mentioned it. 'But we can go out into the country tomorrow, explore the Lake District and make it an all-day walk. And we're going to Scotland in a week's time, after all.'

'When I ran away,' said my Master, speaking in English because we had agreed to practise speaking English, 'I wanted to live in the mountains – not high, icy mountains, but with trees. I had never been out of Hamburg, but there was a book that I had read, about a boy who runs away and lives in a tree. It was translated from American – I think it was the same one Ivan has read, too. Maybe everyone lets himself dream about running away to the mountains.'

'Then why didn't you?' asked the Professor.

'I don't know. But, when I met Firedrake and Sorrel – the first day after we had flown, we landed in a place in the mountains, and it was just the way I had – put it forward to myself?'

'"The way you had imagined it,"' I suggested.

'Yes, the way I had imagined it. Only I had not imagined the dwarves. I think that was where Gravelbeard started following us, before he met you and Nettlebrand.'

'Actually, that was where _I_ started following you,' I said. 'We were created in a castle not far off from where you were camping – you could probably see it. Gravelbeard and a couple of other dwarves had a business making armour polish for Nettlebrand, in return for the small amounts of gold remaining in the laboratory, but they usually traded through the ravens and they didn't know Nettlebrand all that well. Otherwise, even Gravelbeard wouldn't have been stupid enough to believe that Nettlebrand would pay him for bringing news of a silver dragon. But as it was, he came rushing to the castle, which was why Nettlebrand kept him as a replacement armour-cleaner while he sent me out to follow you.' I had forgotten that I had never actually explained this before. In the past, even after everyone knew that I was Nettlebrand's spy, I hadn't wanted to talk much about the details because just thinking about it was so painful. Now, it feels so long ago that it doesn't matter so much.

'So you come from those mountains, too! They were beautiful, weren't they? Do you miss them?' my Master asked.

'I haven't spent much more time in them than you have,' I explained. 'Usually, Nettlebrand hardly ever allowed me outside the castle, and when he did, he carried me inside him, so that I didn't have the chance to see what was going on. So when he suddenly sent me out to spy on you and Firedrake, I was too busy feeling frightened of everything – of Nettlebrand, of flying, of being caught – to notice whether things were beautiful or not. But, thinking back – yes, they were.'

'Do you want to go back there sometime?' asked Professor Greenbloom. 'If you wanted to take any of your favourite books from the castle library, there's really no reason why we shouldn't.'

'I don't know,' I said. I do miss the books – not just 15th and 16th century books printed with movable type, but older woodblock-printed books, including 8th century Chinese poetry, and ancient handwritten scrolls. But there are too many unhappy memories linked to everything else about the castle, like the tower that the alchemist dropped my brother Cranefly off when he was experimenting with gravity. After dropping all of us from increasing heights, the alchemist Petrosius Henbane learned that small, light creatures like homunculi are not heavy enough to be seriously injured no matter from what height they fall. We learned that if you fall off a monster's back by accident, it is better to say nothing and just get on with filing his claws, but if a human drops you on purpose, it is important to scream and appear to be in pain to deter him from experimenting further. After he dropped Cranefly with a heavy weight strapped to his back, the alchemist learned that badly injured homunculi can take a long time to recover sufficiently to return to work, and that, as it is a complicated and time-consuming process to make a homunculus, it is cheaper to experiment on rats. We learned about how to splint broken bones so that they set straight, and why it is important to carry injured people on a stretcher.

No – I don't feel ready to revisit my birthplace just yet. Even though I know that Petrosius Henbane is dead, and Nettlebrand isn't coming back, the ravens might still be there. They might want to take revenge on me.

After coming home, we get on with the scheduled schoolwork, and then spend the rest of the day playing with the computer. This house has two computers: a modern one with internet access, and one about thirty years old, which is apparently very ancient and slow for a computer, and doesn't have much memory, but is simple enough for beginners like us to be able to write programs on it. I have to kneel in front of the space bar and stretch my arms right across the keyboard to reach the QWERTY line of letters, let alone the numbers, but I can manage.

At the moment, we're writing a program to identify what sort of fabulous being you've encountered, whether it's dangerous, and what to do about it. Of course, in real life if you run into (for example) a basilisk or a roc, you're unlikely to have time to type in a lot of answers, but this is just for practice. The first question, 'Does it have a bird's head?' can be answered YES or NO. If you answer YES, but then answer NO to 'Is it all bird?' the program identifies various types of bird-headed creature, and gives suggestions on what to do if it's a basilisk (show it a mirror, and it'll blow itself up), griffin (offer it lots of gold or mussel-shells, and hope it doesn't eat you), hippogriff (bow politely – if the hippogriff bows in return, it might be friendly), the Hindu god Garuda, or some of the Egyptian deities (I'm not sure how I'd respond to these).

We're still rushing ahead with _The Lives Of Christopher Chant_ , and each chapter makes me feel more curious about Tacroy. However, I'm now even more intrigued by the girl goddess who lives in a temple, and wants to read school stories so that she can find out what it's like to be a normal child, going to school and having friends one's own age. I want to read on and finish the book in one night, but I've made myself promise not to. After all, until I came here it had been 348 years and six months since I had anyone to read to, back when my brothers were alive, and it's wonderful to have that again.

So, the days are good. But for some reason I've been having terrible dreams every night for the last few nights: all dreams about my Master. Sometimes he's being kidnapped by a vampire (not Atticus), or mauled by a werewolf; sometimes, instead of having been adopted by the Greenbloom family, he lives with his wicked uncle who is trying to murder him; sometimes he's ill and close to death, and Firedrake and Sorrel and I have to travel around the world finding ingredients for a potion to cure him; sometimes he's been taken to be Nettlebrand's slave; sometimes he has a different personality, because Firedrake is dead, and Professor Greenbloom (who in that dream seems not to have a wife or daughter) can't get through to him. But the most frightening dreams are always the one about running away from home with Ivan and running into danger.

When these dreams get to the part where I'm on the verge of dying of sorrow, I wake up (usually) to hear the gentle breathing of a healthy, contented twelve-year-old boy fast asleep. Once, we were _both_ having nightmares, and woke each other by screaming, and reassured each other that it was just a dream, and went back to sleep cuddled up together. At least our dreams really are only dreams. If we were having the sort of adventures that Christopher has in the book, travelling to other worlds in our dreams and getting killed there and then getting killed again in an accident the following day – well, even if we'd each been born with nine lives, like Christopher, we'd be dead within a week.

Carol, my Master's social worker, came this afternoon, at 4pm, when Miss Guinevere was home from school and Professora Greenbloom was home from work, so that she could talk to the four humans together to start with, and ask them how things were going. Then she asked all the others to go the living-room so that she could talk to my Master on his own, sitting at the kitchen table, without anyone else overhearing. She meant the humans, and wasn't really talking to Hob and Bwbach, but they stalked out as well. However, my Master had told me I could stay, hidden in the larder and watching through a crack in the door.

'So, how have things been going, the past week?' she asked.

'All right.'

'How do you feel about being away from school?'

'Well, I miss my friends at school. But I like having more time with – with Barnabas.'

'Do you understand why you're not allowed to go to school?'

'Because I had my penknife in my bag, and the police thought I might hurt someone. But I _wouldn't_! They could say that I must no string have, in case I someone strangle!'

My Master sounded all of a sudden as if he was trying not to cry. Carol patted his hand and said, 'All right, all right. Take deep breaths. Would you like a cup of tea? Glass of water? Anything?'

'Can I hot choc – can I make myself a hot chocolate, please?'

'It's all right, I'll make it,' said Carol. 'You just relax.'

She made tea for herself, and a mug of hot chocolate with the last of the powder in the jar. From the face my Master made as he sipped it, I could guess that it was very thin and bland, but he couldn't have led her to the spare jar in the larder without revealing me.

'How do you feel about school?' she asked.

'It's all right.'

'What subjects do you like best?'

'Art and Geography. And I like English at the moment, because I like the book that we are reading. They let me borrow a copy so that I can finish reading it.'

'Is there anything that you don't .like about school?'

He considered. 'Having to wear a tie. And not being allowed to chew gum.'

'Am I right in thinking you didn't go to school for a while, did you?'

My Master didn't answer, possibly because he wasn't sure whether the answer was, 'Yes,' or, 'No.'

The social worker tried again. 'Is it hard to get used to going to school? And being in a different country?'

'Well, sometimes. But I like different countries. I travelled a lot, before I came here.'

'Have there been any problems at school? Is there anyone who makes you feel frightened or unhappy?'

'No.'

'And – how do you feel about your foster family?'

'They're wonderful! I thought I would never have a family. I used to feel as if parents were imaginary – like dragons!'

'Oh, dear – are Barnabas and Vita like dragons? That doesn't sound good!'

'I like dragons,' my Master explained.

'Oh, good, that's all right, then. So – is there anything you don't like about being here?'

'I miss my friends – my old friends from before I came here – because they live in another country now. But we are going to see them at Christmas.'

'That's good. And you can always phone or email them in the meantime, can't you? Are they on Skype?'

'I don't think so.'

'Well, maybe you can sort something out next time you see them. And you're making new friends here, aren't you?'

'Yes.'

'So you'll be able to see them again after Christmas, when you start going back to your normal school. And I expect you'll make some good friends at the PRU, too. You seem like the sort of kind, friendly boy anyone would want to be friends with.'

'I'll see my friend Ivan tomorrow,' my Master said. 'We're going for a walk in the Lake District. And we're going camping in Scotland at half-term.'

'That's good. Now – have you got a bedroom of your own now?'

'Yes – you can see it if you want.' So my Master led her down to the basement. I could still hear snatches of their conversation, and Carol sounded fairly satisfied.

We've got an appointment to visit the Pupil Referral Unit on Monday. Carol says it's a nice place, with lots of art and drama and football and pets, and plenty of therapy and support for children with emotional problems and challenging behaviour, and nobody has to wear a uniform or do homework. On the other hand – presumably it has so much support because it _has_ a lot of children with 'challenging behaviour', whatever that means. What if it means everyone challenges us to fight?


	12. Chapter 12

Saturday 17th October 2015

Today's day out was rather more crowded than expected. I had thought that it would be the five of us, and perhaps Ivan. But first of all, as we were having breakfast, Miss Guinevere's phone rang. She picked it up, left the table, and said delightedly, 'Meera!' and then, 'Well – I'd love to. Only – well, my parents were going to take us all out for a walk in the country… okay, I'll ask. Mum? Dad? Can Meera come with us for our walk?... She says can she bring her bike?... and Liam?... Yes, they say that's fine… Of course I want you to! Of course we're still friends!... I've gone back to cycling to school with you the last three days!... Well, I started walking instead of cycling because I was keeping Ben company and he doesn't have a bike!... Because he's new at school and he's my brother, okay?... No, of course I'm not jealous because you're always with Liam… Well, it'll be the four of us today anyway. Or maybe five, if Ben's friend Ivan can make it as well… Good, see you, then… We'll probably be catching the bus. My parents don't like using the car if they can avoid it… Yeah, there's bound to be room for our bikes on the bus – they're all foldable anyway… See you, then. Bye.'

She put the phone down, and then asked, 'Ben – do you like cycling?'

'I don't know,' my Master said. 'I've never had a bike. That time at the fair in the summer was the first time I'd ridden one.'

One of the attractions at the funfair had been a 'humorous velodrome' with an assortment of bizarre-looking machines which their riders seemed to find almost impossible to stay on, let alone move forward or steer. Professor Greenbloom had tried one large, leggy-looking creature which immediately fell over, but my Master and Miss Guinevere had each tried to ride several, laughing when the machines swerved in the opposite direction to the one they were meant to go in, or went backwards. The Professor had explained to me afterwards that this was a collection of the oddest bicycles ever designed, mostly from when they were first being invented.

'Well – I've got a bicycle I don't use much, and you're welcome to borrow it,' the Professor offered now. 'I bought it to remind myself to leave the car at home, but on balance I'd still rather walk or go by bus, so the bike could probably do with some exercise. It might be a bit big, but it should be all right if I lower the saddle and the handlebars a bit.'

'Or I could borrow dad's and you can ride mine, if you don't mind that it's a girl's bike,' offered Miss Guinevere. 'Or we can walk, and Meera and Liam can cycle on ahead and keep coming back to see where we've got to.'

'I'd like to try riding Barnabas's bike, if I can,' said my Master. 'After all, I got used to riding a dragon fast enough. Only – Twigleg, do you want Barnabas or Vita to look after you while I'm riding? I don't want to fall off and land on you, if you're in my pocket.'

'Thank you,' I said. 'I think I _would_ prefer that.' What I'd really have preferred would have been for Meera and Liam not to invite themselves along, so that I didn't have to stay hidden, but it was too late to uninvite them now.

Admittedly, when they arrived, they seemed likeable enough people. Peering through a hole in a rucksack that I shared with several boxes of sandwiches, packets of biscuits, and thermoi of soup, coffee, and hot chocolate, I recognised the boy and girl who had been told off for having peculiar haircuts. Meera's crest of hair, now no longer stiff and spiky, fell across the left-hand side of her head, and the dark roots were showing under the bleached silvery part. Liam wore a knitted green cap in the shape of a dragon's head with floppy ears and a goofy expression. When he took it off, his hair was cropped short, but growing back in a soft ginger fuzz, and he had plasters over where his earrings had been.

'Hi, Ben,' said Liam. 'Good to see you. When you didn't turn up, I wondered if you were ill. Then they started searching everyone's bags, and looking really serious – not like they do when they're just telling us off for wearing jewellery or smoking, but asking us about weapons and stuff – and I wondered if someone had tried to bump you off.'

'No. It was because I had a knife. The police took it away,' said my Master mournfully.

' _You?_ ' Liam looked incredulous. 'You're about the gentlest person I've ever met! You're not trying to be a knight or something, are you – St Ben and the dragon?'

'No! I love dragons!'

'Me too!' said Liam. 'I dream about flying, most nights.'

'Flying on the back of a dragon?' asked my Master. Really, how many dragon-riders were there in this school?

'No – flying _as_ a dragon!' said Meera. 'I get that dream, too.'

My Master smiled. 'Maybe you were dragons in a past life.'

'Or maybe we're going to grow into were-dragons!' said Liam, spreading out his arms and flapping them like wings, and huffing as if he was breathing fire.

'When my mum was little,' Meera said, 'her granny told her that if she was a good girl, she might be born as a man next time, and then if she was really, _really_ good, eventually she might get to be born a priest.'

'Ugh, gross!' said Miss Guinevere. 'What sort of "good", anyway?'

'Yeah, well, that's the fing, innit?' said Meera. 'Mum's parents wanted her to go to university and become a doctor, but she reckons her grandparents just wanted her to be a good little housewife baking chapattis. So that's why she did English instead of medicine at university and became a journalist, and then wrote books with loads of sex in them. It's her way of, like, rebelling against everyone, innit.'

'And you rebel against her by saying, "like, innit" all the time,' added Miss Guinevere.

'Yeah, course!' Meera considered, and added, 'So, what're _you_ gonna do to rebel?'

'I don't think I want to,' said Miss Guinevere. 'I don't see why I should have to rebel against my parents just because everyone else does. Anyway, what are you going to be after rebelling?'

'A pilot,' said Meera.

'Me, too,' said Liam. 'I want to be an air ambulance helicopter pilot. But I might join the RAF first, so they can teach me how to fly.'

'But what if they order you to drop bombs on people?' asked Miss Guinevere.

'I'll say no. It's against the law, anyway, bombing civilians.'

At this point, the doorbell rang again. There was Ivan – along with his father, two brothers, and another man. When Professora Greenbloom opened the door, the stranger looked at her, then looked at his watch and said, 'On second thoughts, James, I'd better go. I've got – an appointment I'd forgotten about. See you this evening.' With that he hurried off, looking very unwell. He was a big, square-shouldered man, with blond hair, arched black eyebrows that didn't match it, and a slight double chin.

'Who was what?' Meera asked, as Ivan and his family came in.

'Mr Foulweather,' said my Master, sounding almost as shaky as Mr Foulweather had looked. 'He was my foster carer before I ran away.'

'You ran away? Did he beat you? Was he trying to kill you, d'you think?' asked Liam.

'No. I just – didn't like him.'

'D'you think he's planning to kidnap you and take you back?'

'I don't think so. But – I don't know what he is doing in England.'

'So _that's_ why you got suspended!' said Liam. 'It wasn't really because they thought you were dangerous – it was to keep _you_ safe from being kidnapped by making sure your new foster-dad doesn't let you out of his sight and give your old foster-dad a chance to grab you!'

Meera laughed. 'Oh, stop it, Liam! Take no notice of him, Ben, he's always making up lurid conspiracy theories like this.'

'Maybe,' said Miss Guinevere. 'But – Ben, I thought Mr Foulweather was banned from working with children. Shouldn't we warn Ivan's dad?'

'He's already told me,' said Dr Marrs. 'And it was a complete overreaction to a misunderstanding – like this trouble Ben's gotten into lately, with the police and being suspended from school. Europe's all like this these days – the politically correct brigade sticking their noses into everything. But Rudolf Foulweather has been my good friend for many years, and no matter how much people persecute him, I trust him! Now, about this walk – is it all right if we come along, too? I've been working so hard, I haven't had the chance to take my boys out to see much of the countryside round here. Don't worry, I've brought food – we can eat ours and you eat yours, or pool what we've got. Though I'm not sure we'll be able to keep up with Ivan's sugar addiction between us!' he added with a grin. Ivan – who is completely unfazed by anyone else teasing him about his craving for sweets – glared at his father but said nothing.

It was a frosty, beautiful day which grew brighter as it went on. When we arrived in the country park, my Master, Miss Guinevere and Meera fastened on cycle helmets – which seems to be almost compulsory now, as if riding a bicycle is something far more dangerous than riding a dragon, but after all, bicycles don't have back-spines that you can tie a seat-belt to. Liam didn't bother, and just wore his woolly dragon cap, as he pedalled around with his hands off the handlebars and arms spread wide out. 'Woah!' he called. 'Dragon-wings! Come on Meera, you do it, too! We can even get dragon-smoke!' And he huffed out steaming breath to look like puffs of smoke.

Joseph, Ivan's youngest brother, started to cry. Ivan picked him up. 'Hey, little buddy, it's okay,' he crooned. 'They're being friendly dragons, not mean dragons. Did you know, a dragon let me ride on his back once? Hey, why don't we play that I'm a dragon, and you're riding on me?'

Joseph stopped crying and said, 'Okay,' and let Ivan hoist him onto his back. Ivan, snorting 'smoke' like the four on bikes, ran off after them.

Josh, Ivan's twin, sneered, 'You guys are _so_ immature!' and hung back to walk with his father, and Professor and Professora Greenbloom. 'Honestly!' he snorted. 'Going on about _dragons_ , as though they're little kids like Joseph! And they're practically in their teens! Isn't it pathetic?'

'Don't be so sure about that,' his father said. 'You'd be surprised what's out there. Now, Barnabas,' he went on, 'when you and Vita go up to Scotland the week after next…'

'Actually, it'll be just Barnabas and the children,' Professora Greenbloom explained. 'I'm working, and I probably won't be able to make it up until the following weekend, the 31st to 1st November.'

'Oh! Well, I was just going to say – how would it be if we came up to join you? I've got some time off booked that week, and it'd be good to get away on a camping holiday.' (Josh groaned.) 'Shut up, Josh. It's something we used to do quite a bit, when my wife was – still with us. So, could you use an extra hand with all these kids?'

'That's very kind, but – well, it's not exactly an official campsite,' said Professor Greenbloom. 'It's more of an environmental protesters' camp, near to a valley that they're trying to turn into a reservoir. I'm not sure exactly where it is, but a friend of mine who's spent some time here sent me a map reference which should get us there – here it is on my phone – so I can send you a copy.'

'Thank you – it'll make a change to do some wild camping. And you're sure you can't make it, Vita? Not even next weekend?'

'I'm afraid not – too much to do,' said the Professora. 'Guinevere's hoping to invite Meera along, so that she won't be the only girl.'

The conversation wandered onto other topics, like the ban on jewellery at school. 'It's ridiculous!' grumbled Dr Marrs. 'They let Muslim girls wear headscarves, but my boys are banned from wearing crucifixes.' (Josh rolled his eyes with embarrassment.)

'Oh, are you Christian?' asked Professora Greenbloom.

'No – but what's that got to do with it? Is there any law saying only Christians can wear crucifixes? Don't unbelievers have the same right to protection against vampires?'

'Really…' began the Professor, but Dr Marrs snorted.

'What's wrong, don't you believe in them? You can accept the existence of dragons, but not vampires?'

'Of course I can accept the existence of vampires,' said Professor Greenbloom. 'But have they ever done you any harm?'

'No! Because I carry protection, that's why! And I make sure my kids do, rules or no rules. If any vampire gets close to me, I flash my cross at him and he'll crumble to dust!'

'So,' said Professor Greenbloom, 'don't vampires deserve any protection from you?'

The conversation was interrupted by Liam riding back to see if Josh wanted a turn on his bike, and then the argument about religious symbols turned into a discussion about the Green Man motif, and the three-hares-with-three-ears symbol. This was rather more interesting to listen to, but I couldn't help feeling that, given a choice between spending time with Atticus or Dr Marrs (not to mention his friend who had run off as soon as he had caught sight of Professora Greenbloom), I would choose Atticus at his most drunk and annoying.

If I come along to Scotland (and I'd hate to stay behind), should I try to stay hidden for the whole week, or make myself known to all these humans? I suppose, if they can get used to the existence of dragons, they probably won't find me very surprising by comparison. I wouldn't mind getting to know Meera, and even Liam seems fairly harmless, but I really, really wish Ivan's family weren't coming.


	13. Chapter 13

Tuesday 20th October 2015

Today we visited the Pupil Referral Unit the Local Education Authority had recommended. It's a much smaller place than the school my Master took me to before, and the classes we were allowed into generally had about five or six children and two or three teachers in them. Nobody wore uniforms, and the children and teachers all addressed each other by their first names. The headteacher who showed my Master and Professor Greenbloom around (and me, although of course she wasn't aware of that) didn't take us into every room. She started by looking through a glass window in the classroom door, and in rooms where a teacher was soothing a child who was having a screaming panic attack, or restraining one who was trying to smash everything in the room to pieces, or breaking up a fight, she moved on to the next class. It wasn't that she was trying to cover anything up; she'd say something like, 'When people get upset like that, we generally take them to the Quiet Room until they're feeling better, but obviously they need to be calm enough to be ready to walk there,' or, 'Yes, some of the children here have quite challenging behaviour, but they do settle down in time.' She showed us the Quiet Room, with soft lighting and a mural of a coral reef; the playground; the swimming pool; the school hall which was currently housing a drama lesson; the school farm, with beds of vegetables, pens of chickens, and a paddock of goats.

Finally, she led us upstairs to her office and had a long conversation with my Master and the Professor. Mostly, she seemed to be asking my Master the same questions that Carol the social worker had asked him last week, and he gave much the same answers. At last, after thinking things over, she took a deep breath and said, 'Well – this school is focused on providing support for the most vulnerable children – often ones from a very chaotic family background, children who never know whether there will be food in the house, or whether their parents will be sober by the time they come home from school, or when someone might lash out at them. For a lot of them, school is the only stable environment in their lives. And sometimes they're children who are in foster care _now_ , but who are still traumatised by their past experiences, and showing some challenging behaviour – for example, running away, hurting themselves or other people, or odd sexual behaviour. Barnabas, have you experienced any problems like that with Ben?'

'No, not at all.'

'Any problems with eating?'

'No, he's got a very healthy appetite.'

'And the letter I had from Ben's school says that he's a good pupil who seems to get on well with other children and with staff, and hadn't been in any trouble until the incident a week ago. His social worker describes him as a cheerful and well-adjusted child. Would you agree with that, in general?'

'Yes, definitely.'

'Well, you see, the truth is,' – the head looked very embarrassed – 'I'm not really sure Ben needs this place as much as some of the others. We're supposed to have one member of staff for every two children, but at the moment it's nearer to two adults for every five children, and we've constantly got new referrals coming in. And most of our pupils are children who've got – so many difficulties to overcome that it's generally at least a year before they're ready to return to mainstream schools. Now, I can try contacting some other Pupil Referral Units who might have spaces, or I can give you their contact details and you can do that for yourself. But if there aren't any that are suitable, do you think you'd be able to teach Ben at home for a few weeks?'

'Of course! I'm off work until Christmas anyway, and we've been getting on briskly with the work Ben's school sent us for the past week.'

'Ben,' said the head, 'which would you prefer? Would you rather go to another school from now until Christmas – not this school, but another one like it – or would you rather stay at home and do lessons with Barnabas?'

'Stay at home.'

'Well, that might be the best answer, then,' said the head.

So we went home and had lunch, and in the afternoon, Professor Greenbloom rang my Master's school and asked whether they could send a schedule of what he's supposed to be learning between now and the end of term. They seemed surprised, but quite happy with the arrangement as long as it means that my Master will be up to date with what everyone else is studying when he returns to school.

On the other hand, we've rushed ahead much too fast with _The Lives Of Christopher Chant_ , and are now at least two thirds of the way through the book. Christopher has got killed again in the last couple of chapters (first being burnt by a dragon when he and Tacroy were collecting a consignment of dragon's blood, then burnt again when lighting a fire for a picnic), and Tacroy is refusing to take him on any more smuggling trips in case something like this happens again. And the Goddess has discovered that, when she gets too old to be the child-avatar of Asheth, she is going to be killed (for real – given that she, unlike Christopher, doesn't have multiple lives), so she wants Christopher to help her escape from the temple so that she can go to school. I can't wait to see what happens – but I'm going to miss the book when it's over. We need to ask Miss Guinevere to pick up the next one from the school library before half-term.

I never used to feel this way about books before. I loved reading because I wanted to learn everything I could about the world outside the castle – about history, about science, about magic, and about theology. Languages were something I picked up almost in passing, because the books were written in so many different languages. But I wasn't used to caring about the people in books and worrying about what might happen to them in the next chapter, the way I feel about Hiccup, or about Christopher and his friends. Was this because most of the books I grew up with weren't stories? Perhaps it was because, when my brothers were alive and we read aloud to each other, I didn't need anyone except them, and after they died, I didn't want to feel anything or care about anyone, whether someone I knew or someone in a book.

When I had to travel inside Nettlebrand, I could see the metal box in which his heart was safely locked away. But perhaps my heart was emotionally locked away for 348 years, to protect it from being hurt again. And now it isn't.


	14. Chapter 14

Events of Saturday 25th October 2015, campsite in Scotland

I'm writing this some days later, but I'm trying to keep things in chronological order. We drove up to Scotland, with Professor Greenbloom, my Master, Miss Guinevere, Meera and Liam in one car, followed by Ivan and his family in the other. As there didn't seem to be much point in concealing my presence for nine days, I climbed out of my Master's pocket to sit on his lap in the front seat (Miss Guinevere and her friends wanted to sit in the back so that they could be together). We looked at the road atlas together, which is less colourful than a rat-made map, but still interesting. After a while, Meera glanced forward and said, 'Have you got a pet squirrel or – oh, wow!'

I introduced myself, and my Master began to explain how he had met me in Egypt, around the same time that he met Professor Greenbloom. Liam broke in: 'So, is Twigleg, like, made out of Barnabas's DNA or something?'

Professor Greenbloom and I exclaimed, ' _WHAT?_ ' and, 'No, of course not!' more or less in unison.

'Twigleg was created long before my time,' explained the Professor. 'Homunculi can live for hundreds of years, after all.'

'Sorry, sorry,' said Liam. 'It's just – you look so alike, that's all.'

'I was designed to look humanoid, but I don't have any human ancestry at all,' I said, wondering how many times I'd have to explain this. 'If you must know, I was probably created from a spider, and a friend of mine was created from a mouse and some plasticine.'

'Yeah, but you don't look just, you know, generally humanoid,' said Liam. 'You look way more like Barnabas than Guinevere does, and she's his daughter! It's like – like fantasy stories where people are split into two people living in different worlds, and they need to be put back together again to be complete. I reckon me and Meera were probably two halves of the same person, originally.'

'I think if anyone made me complete, it was my – it was Ben,' I said. 'He let me start to turn into a decent person, because he thought that I was one anyway. But I don't think Ben was ever _half_ of anything. He just _is_ a good person. Aren't you?'

My Master looked embarrassed. 'I don't know. I was just a very lonely person, until I met a dragon.'

Liam and Meera looked as though they weren't sure whether he was joking, but Professor Greenbloom and Miss Guinevere nodded. 'Wow, you mean – in real life?' said Liam. 'Not just in a dream or something?'

'In real life. We go – we are going to visit a dragon now, but – not my friend Firedrake. He is probably by now in Asia. I miss him. Ivan has a dragon friend, too, and they have not seen each other for years.'

'Do dragons live for hundreds of years, too?' Meera asked.

'Generally up to a thousand or so,' said Professor Greenbloom. 'Of course, if they go into suspended animation, for example by being encased in stone, they don't age. And for all we know, there might be aquatic species hibernating on the bottom of the sea who go back to Viking times.'

'How long do homunculi live?' asked Meera.

'Well, we don't age, so we can live indefinitely,' I said. 'It's – a matter of personal choice.'

[Editor's note – passage in italics is written in Farsi, without an English translation.] _I hope my Master hasn't read the passage in Professor Greenbloom's notebook about becoming mortal. It was an extract from a Latin textbook, which the Professor hadn't translated into German, and I don't think my Master can read Latin – but I'm quite sure he can't read Farsi. I don't want him to feel that he, when he dies, is going to be guilty of killing me._

'So – it must be tough on long-lived beings, when they lose a human friend,' said Meera.

'Yeah, but if you know it's going to happen, it's probably like – like getting over the death of your granny when you know she was really old anyway,' said Liam. 'Or like a human getting over the death of a dog. You just have to make the most of loving people while they're around, instead of wishing it could be forever. But if we _do_ turn into were-dragons and that means we live for hundreds of years, we've got to make sure we _both_ turn into them!' he added jokingly to Meera. 'If I turn into one and you stay human and then die, I'll never speak to you again!'

'Unless I get reincarnated as a were-dragon next time,' said Meera. 'You'll just have to wait a bit, that's all.'

'Are you all right?' my Master asked me quietly, in German.

'It doesn't matter,' I said. 'Only – if you should die – _when_ you die, I don't want to go back to being the miserable, selfish coward I was before I met you!'

'You won't!' said my Master, ruffling my hair. 'I mean – I don't think you were a coward, anyway. I think anyone who could cope with living with Nettlebrand for hundreds of years without going mad is tougher than I could ever be. But, well, when something happens and your life changes, I don't think you _can_ go back to being the person you were before, anyway. But by the time I die, you'll probably have made loads of other friends, so it's not as if you'd be all alone. Anyway, it's probably not going to happen for ages and ages, anyway.'

'No,' I said. 'It's a lifetime away.' And it happens again and again in my dreams. The burning dream has come back a lot more frequently since we read that chapter about Christopher being burnt to a crisp by an angry dragon. I know silver dragons don't do that, but who knows about other species? In the book, whenever Christopher dies while spirit-travelling, he dies in a similar way in real life the next day. I know my dreams are just ordinary anxiety dreams, not spirit-travelling, but – what if dreams can change reality?

At the end of the book, Christopher seems to have only two lives left: the one he is actually living, and the one his guardian keeps hidden in a magic ring as a reserve. When I read that, it reminded me of Professor Greenbloom's wedding ring, and the question of whether he would be safe from Hollows without it.

We arrived to find what had been, to judge by the rectangles of yellowed grass, a fairly popular unofficial campsite. I had returned to my Master's pocket until I'd had time to check how crowded it was, but I could see only one tent left, plus a camper-van, and one woman who was packing up her tent as we arrived. 'I'm afraid you've missed the party,' she said, as our group and Ivan's family emerged from the two cars. 'We were planning to stay till Samhain – even the King was here.'

'King?' Ivan blinked. 'I thought Queen Elizabeth's husband was just called Prince Philip or something.'

'No, silly!' said the woman. 'King Arthur Uther Pendragon.'

Ivan looked even more startled. 'But I thought he was from hundreds of years ago.'

'This one's rumoured to be a reincarnation of him,' explained Professor Greenbloom. 'He's a biker druid eco-warrior who campaigns a lot for environmental issues – and for pagans to have the right to worship at Stonehenge without having to pay for access or parking. Whether you think he's the original King or not, he's a splendid man.'

'Yes, we were all glad when he came,' said the woman. 'We had a few clashes with the police, we've been climbing up diggers – even held nude protest vigils on diggers, which takes some dedication once the weather starts getting this nippy! But, well, this _is_ a Site of Special Scientific Interest – that valley down there is an ecosystem so inaccessible to humans, we were sure there were undiscovered species living down there even _before_ we saw that migration of giant bats a few weeks ago!'

'Oh, good. I hoped we'd got the right place,' said Professor Greenbloom.

'I feel like a traitor, leaving now,' said the woman. 'Even if they've all flown off for the winter to – wherever it is they're going, what's going to happen if they come back next year and their valley isn't there any more?'

'I'd say it's more likely that they were taking their leave permanently, rather than just migrating,' said the Professor. 'After all, if we haven't seen movements like this before, then the chances are that they're not usually a migratory species, but that they realised they weren't safe here any longer. At this stage, about all we can do is pray to whatever gods we believe in that they'll find a safer home somewhere else.'

'I hope so,' said the woman. 'Only – I'm a coward, that's the trouble. Arthur had to go because there was another protest that needed him, but the rest of us – well, we got scared after someone started killing sheep.'

'Well, I don't like slaughter myself, but you can't blame the farmers for culling their stock before the winter sets in,' said the Professor.

'No, no, not the farmers – they tried blaming _us_ , would you believe it? The first time, a couple of weeks ago, it was just the one sheep, with a couple of puncture wounds in its throat – almost like bite marks – and not a drop of blood left in it, the farmer said. He was trying to accuse us of sacrificing it in satanic rites! I mean, most of us are vegetarians – though Arthur loves his burgers, ozone layer or no ozone layer! But that was just the one-off – a few people joked about the giant bats maybe being vampires – but then, the past few days, there've been massacres of five or six sheep every night, soaked in blood, as if whoever or _whatever_ did it just enjoys killing. They weren't just doing it for food, whoever they were. And then it was dogs and cats as well as foxes, and we started wondering – is whoever-it-was going to start on humans next? About the only people who aren't frightened are the big man in the camper-van, and the green-haired student in that tent, who seems more frightened of camper-van man than of anything else. Don't know who they are – they're both new, and they keep to themselves, both of them. The camper-van man's been here a week, but he hasn't so much as said hello! He just took one look at us, snorted and said, "Common"! All right, he might have meant that the _land_ should be common and not taken over by water companies, but I think he's just a snob at heart. Well, I must be off,' she concluded. 'My hubby's been running the co-op while I've been here, but there'll be all these kiddies trick-or-treating next week, and needing someone to teach them about the _real_ meaning of Samhain.' She buckled her rucksack on, and set off in the direction of the distant bus-stop.

Dr Marrs shook his head. 'With an attitude like this, it probably wasn't worth explaining that the man in the camper-van was a friend of mine,' he said. 'I'd better introduce you, since there wasn't much time to say hello last week.'

He led us up to the van and knocked on the door. There was a voice saying, 'No! Wait!' and then the door opened to reveal a large, blond-haired man who, even in a muddy field in Scotland, wore a suit and a broad tie with floral swirls on it: the man whom Dr Marrs had tried to bring to meet us last week. 'Rudolf, this is Dr Barnabas Greenbloom, whose son goes to the same school as mine,' said Dr Marrs. 'Barnabas, this is my good friend, Rudolf Faulwetter.'

'Why, Barnabas, how delightful to meet you!' purred Mr Faulwetter. 'Is your charming wife not with you today?'

'Vita's busy with work at the moment. She's planning to catch a coach up and then a local bus to join us next weekend.'

'Oh, that's a shame. Ah, and I couldn't forget _you_ , Ben. My little runaway!'


	15. Chapter 15

Events of Saturday 25th October 2015 continued

I wondered whether Mr Faulwetter, or Foulweather (I might as well use his name in German, rather than the English translation) really was going to try to steal my Master back, but he only shut the door of his caravan quickly behind him. I had a glimpse of something writhing in the vehicle behind him, and a whiff of a stench that reminded me of the depths of Nettlebrand's stomach, where it was so cold that you wouldn't think anything _could_ stink, and yet it did. Atticus had smelled odd and distinctly non-human, but probably not strongly enough that a human would have picked it up. I could detect the same vampire-smell from the far end of the campsite now. What was the probability of Atticus having decided to come up here just a couple of weeks before we did? And was it greater or less than the probability of _another_ vampire who looked like a student with green hair having made that decision?

Mr Faulwetter stood in front of his van, smiling the way Nettlebrand would have done at the prospect of gorging himself on dragons, if Nettlebrand's jaws had been capable of smiling at all. What was he doing here? Hunting vampires? Did he think that Atticus had killed all those sheep? The one that was neatly drained, maybe, but surely a vampire wouldn't be so wasteful as to leave slaughtered sheep soaked in blood. But would an obsessive, possibly deranged vampire-hunter see it that way? Peering out of my Master's pocket, I could see a large silver cross dangling on top of Mr Faulwetter's tie. I wondered whether he was the sort of person who regarded homunculi as ungodly abominations to be destroyed. I'd better stay hidden, I decided.

But at this moment, a small aeroplane came soaring up out of the valley below us, flown by a rat and crewed by a clay man who was waving cheerfully. Lola landed at Professor Greenbloom's feet, and she and Mouse stepped climbed out.

'Hi, everyone!' Lola called. 'Hey, where's the other hunkupulus?'

'Here,' I said. 'Mr Faulwetter, may I present Lola Greytail, world's foremost rodent aviator, explorer, and daredevil; and Mouse the clay man, who has been accompanying her on her travels? I am Twigleg, homunculus and bibliomaniac.'

'Fascinating,' said Mr Faulwetter, crouching down to inspect us. 'I heard of a boy who could make clay automata come to life, but to my great disappointment I've never had the chance to meet him.'

'You haven't missed much,' said Mouse. 'Enoch never understood that we _were_ alive – that we were people. He just wanted to make a model army to guard him from the Wights and the Hollows – when he wasn't busy forcing dead people to come back to life.'

'Interesting assortment of hobbies,' said Mr Faulwetter. 'Where does he live, exactly?'

'September the third, 1940,' said Mouse.

'Hey – aren't you going to introduce the rest of us?' protested Ivan.

'Sorry. Ivan, this is my friend Lola, who helped us last summer,' (I didn't want to specify who I meant by 'us' or what she'd helped us do until I knew a lot more about Mr Faulwetter), 'and this is Mouse, who came to visit us about three weeks ago, and then left to go on holiday with Lola for a couple of weeks.'

'Twigleg _made_ me!' said Mouse. 'When I arrived at the Greenbloom's house, I was little more than a lump of plasticine with a mouse's heart inside it, and they took me in and made me welcome in their basement, and Twigleg gave me a voice, skin, a face, hands and feet – and his friendship. He treated me like a person.'

'So _that's_ what you were doing, that week you were suddenly too busy to hang out with us!' exclaimed Ivan. 'You were pottering away like a mad scientist in your lair, waiting to unleash your creation on an unsuspecting world!'

'Mouse wasn't my creation,' I said. 'He was alive anyway. We just gave him somewhere to live, until he wanted to move on. Anyway – Mouse, Lola, this is Ivan, who is Ben's friend; these are Ivan's brothers Josh and Joseph, and his father Dr James Marrs. These are Meera and Liam, who are also friends of Ben and Guinevere. This is Mr Faulwetter, who is a friend of Dr Marrs. Have I missed anyone?

Dr Marrs and Josh were still looking startled at the realisation that homunculi and talking, clothes-wearing, aeroplane-flying rats existed. Joseph said, 'Hello!' and reached out to try to pick Mouse up, but Lola stepped hastily in between them.

'Careful!' she said. 'He's very delicate – you could hurt him.'

'Hello, ratty,' said Joseph, reaching out to touch Lola's furry snout where it stuck out from the flying suit. Lola twitched her tail with irritation, but allowed Joseph to stroke her anyway, and held out a paw to pat his soft pink hand.

The humans put up tents (one for Professor Greenbloom, my Master, Liam, and me; one for Miss Guinevere and Meera; and one for Ivan and his family; Lola and Mouse were planning to sleep in the aeroplane), and then Joseph had an afternoon nap and Professor Greenbloom and Dr Marrs kept Mr Faulwetter talking while the rest of us went to explore the valley that Firedrake had set out from. There was a steep drop, almost a cliff (I had been riding on my Master's shoulder, but while he climbed down I decided to stay in his pocket, grasp the lining tightly and keep my eyes shut), and there were fir trees growing up the sides, which hid it nearly as well as the thick mist overlaying everything. When the going seemed a bit smoother and I dared to look out, we were coming out of the woods, and in front of us I could make out the outline of a – dragoness? I had thought Slatebeard was male.

'Slatebeard?' my Master called.

'He's in his cave, having a rest,' the dragoness answered, coming closer so that we could see her without a veil of mist. Her scales were purple, not silver like the other dragons I'd met. 'Well,' she said, 'it'll do him good to meet the Dragon-rider and her friends, when he wakes up. He told me that Firedrake and Maia talked about the Dragon-rider's return, but he didn't even mention that she'd been reincarnated as a girl!'

'I'm not really…' Miss Guinevere began modestly, but the dragoness shook her head.

'No, not you, dear – your friend!' She nuzzled Meera. 'Is it true that you helped Firedrake find his way from Germany to the Rim of Heaven?'

'Uh, no,' said Meera. 'I've never been to Germany, and I've never even heard of the Rim of Heaven. I've always liked stories about dragons, but I didn't even know there were, like, real ones still around now, until Ben told me, on the way up here.'

'You've got it all mixed up!' I said. 'My Master here is the Dragon-rider who journeyed to the Rim of Heaven with Firedrake and Sorrel. The people we met at the Dragon-rider's tomb, and at the monastery in the mountains, all seemed to think he was the original Dragon-rider reincarnated, but I'm not so sure now.'

'No, indeed!' said the dragoness. 'I suppose – it's possible – but it's even harder to imagine the Dragon-rider being a white boy, than a girl. Well, well – a white Dragon-rider from Europe! Fancy that!'

'Or a white Dragon-rider from America!' put in Ivan. 'Ben isn't the only one, you know! I've been friends with a dragon for years longer than he has!'

'I do apologise,' said the dragoness. 'Well – I must admit, I didn't really feel a spark of recognition at seeing any of you – did you, at seeing me?'

We all shook our heads.

'Then it's probably best to meet each other as we are now, and drop the subject of past lives. My name is Kuriana, and you are…?'

We all introduced ourselves. Lola explained that she was the pilot who had flown to Norway to enlist the help of a fjord troll, who would be coming within a week to carry Slatebeard to safety. 'He's still building a plane big enough to carry a dragon,' she explained. 'Only he said he could work better without a bunch of onlookers getting under his bark, so Mouse and I might as well come back here now.'

'Well, I'm delighted to meet all of you,' said Kuriana. 'Could you stay till nightfall, do you think? Slatebeard should be feeling more alert by then, and I've got another friend who'll be coming down to join us. If any of you is the one, he should know.'

'I don't think we can stay for long now,' said Miss Guinevere. 'Our parents will be wondering what's happened to us. But we could always come here again, say about midnight. Would that be all right?'


	16. Chapter 16

When we returned to the campsite, I could see Professor Greenbloom struggling for his life against the monster that was throttling him from behind. It was roughly man-shaped, but bigger than a man even as it hunched over him – and Professor Greenbloom is tall even for a human. Its long, charcoal-grey tongues were wrapped around him, pinning his arms in place. When he managed to get a hand free, he slapped at the tongues as though he feel them but not see them, before yet another tongue came and wrapped around him. One was gagging him to prevent him from screaming for help. The thing stank like Nettlebrand's foul, icy breath.

Dr Marrs and Mr Faulwetter were sitting by a camp-stove, cooking pasta. Joseph was tugging at his father's trouser-leg and asking, 'Daddy, is Barbarness sick? What's he doing?'

'Sick in the head, I'd say,' said Mr Faulwetter. 'We'd better not go near him. I _expect_ ' (he raised his voice here) 'that whatever it is will go away and he'll be back to normal in a minute.'

I couldn't be sure, as they were all looking in Professor Greenbloom's direction anyway, but I had the impression that Joseph and Dr Marrs couldn't see the monster, and that Mr Faulwetter could and was pretending not to. More than that – he expected the monster to hear what he was saying and take the hint to back off. But why? So that it wouldn't harm someone who was a friend of a friend, or at least a friend's son's friend's foster-father? Or just so that it wouldn't do it when there were witnesses around?

Lola flew off immediately in the direction of the monster, darting around it to try and distract it. It slapped at the plane with one of its tentacle-tongues, smashing a window in the rear of the plane. Mouse scrambled out, holding something that glinted (a pin? A pair of nail-scissors?), and ran up the creature's tentacle to try to jab at its eyes.

'Dad?' called Miss Guinevere. 'Are you all right?'

'He's being attacked by a Hollow,' I said. 'They're invisible to humans. If you can fight one blind, you need to cut off its tongues – it's got at least six, and they're wrapped around him – and stab its eyes out. Has anyone got a knife?'

'I…' my Master began, and then remembered why he didn't have a knife any more.

'Calm _down_!' shouted Mr Faulwetter. 'It's a hallucination, that's all! I mean, dragons and werewolves, yes, homunculi, yes, but invisible monsters? Don't be an IDIOT!' And I was sure this last remark was addressed to the Hollow, not to us.

At this moment, the sleepy figure of Atticus came stumbling out of his tent. He ran up to the Hollow and began trying to rip its tentacle-tongues off – but not bite them, I noticed. He was managing better than Professor Greenbloom, but the Hollow seemed to be stronger still. After a long struggle, he had managed to grapple some of its tongues behind its back, but Professor Greenbloom was so exhausted that he had lost consciousness. At some point, the Hollow must have bitten or clawed at the Professor, and his blood was spurting into a pool. Atticus looked as if he was either trying not to be sick, or trying not to be tempted to lap it up, but he still clung on desperately to the Hollow's tentacles, as if they were the only real thing in the world. And then there came a roar: 'Atti, GET BACK!'

It was Kuriana, the purple dragoness, who had spoken. She came flapping out over the trees, swooped down to the struggling figures, and repeated, 'GET BACK! I need to use fire!'

Atticus reluctantly let go and jumped backwards, away from the struggle. Kuriana's fiery breath enveloped the figures of Professor Greenbloom, the Hollow – and Mouse. It was obvious that she had wanted to protect Atticus from being burnt – so she knew her fire was dangerous to him. Because purple dragons' fire acts differently from silver dragons? No – if she was trying to save Professor Greenbloom – and if she was the dragon who had healed the original Dragon-rider, which seemed quite likely – then that wasn't true. Because any fire was dangerous to a vampire like Atticus? Probably. And it would be dangerous to Mouse, too. If it turned him back into a mouse, would he be a sapient, talking rodent like Lola? Or just an ordinary animal? Oh well, he'd never really had a full life as a homunculus, only the squashy, vulnerable half-life of someone who was still, when all was said and done, a piece of shaped plasticine. Life must have been painful and frustrating for him most of the time. But all the same, I wished it hadn't ended like this.

As Kuriana stepped back, and bent her head to nuzzle Atticus like the old friend he evidently was, the two figures on the ground began to recover. Professor Greenbloom sat up, stood up, then bent down to try to find his glasses – which isn't an easy thing to do when you can't see to find your glasses. The other being handed them to him. 'Hi, Beast Boy,' it said. 'It's good to see you again.'

'Johan!' Professor Greenbloom wiped his glasses and put them back on to check that this really was his friend, and then hugged him. Johan was a big, bear-like man who looked a bit younger than the Professor – like a human of around thirty, as far as I can judge human ages. He had brown hair that fell nearly to his shoulders, and a beard.

'So you were just pretending to be a Hollow all along?' the Professor said. 'Miss Phoenix has been frantic with worry about you, do you realise that? When did you last write home?'

'No; I do now but I didn't then; and what year is it?' retorted Johan.

'2015.'

'Well, in that case – the last thing I remember is everyone worrying about the Millennium Bug. What happened about that, anyway?'

'Oh, not a lot. I gather a lot of computer programmers were working overtime to get the machines Year 2000 compatible so that it didn't. But what about you?'

'Well – I disguised myself as a Hollow in order to get close to a real one, and the last thing I remember clearly was that it got suspicious, as far as anything as dumb as a Hollow can get suspicious, and then it ripped me open and ate my splanch,' said Johan. 'So, then – I couldn't shape-shift, and being stuck in the form of a Hollow meant that, after a while, I really _was_ a Hollow. I can't remember much about it, except feeling hungry all the time, and sometimes being frustrated that I couldn't think properly, and then wondering what "think" was, and why I was disappointed that I couldn't do it any more. I think the other Hollow – the one who ate my splanch – turned into a Wight after a while, and he…'

'Wait!' interrupted Mr Faulwetter. 'How do we know _you_ aren't a Wight?'

In answer, Johan turned into a huge yeti. 'Roaarrrgghhh!' he roared, before changing into a blond-haired man with two heads and three arms, a tiger, a giant panda who exclaimed, 'Oh, no! I'm an endangered species!' before resuming the shape of the large, brown-haired man he had been before. 'That _worked!_ ' he exclaimed, amazed. 'But – the Hollow ate my splanch, so how…?'

'I re-grew it for you, at the same time as healing your friend's wounds,' said Kuriana. 'Dragon-fire has the power to heal wounds as well as undoing enchantments, and in your case I was able to do both.'

'You see?' said Johan. 'Wights don't have special powers – they're the same as Commons, non-magic people, apart from having eyes with no pupils. I'd never have got shapeshifting back by eating enou…' he stopped, ashamed. 'Uh – I don't know how many people I ate,' he mumbled. 'Sometimes it was Peculiars, but I think a lot of the time I ate Commons, or just animals if my Wight wouldn't let me go hunting people. I – I hope I didn't eat anyone we knew. Miss Phoenix didn't let anyone else leave from our home, did she?'

'No, just us and Vita,' Professor Greenbloom reassured him. 'So – if there was a Wight leading you around, do you know what he looked like?'

'It was _him!_ ' called Mr Faulwetter. 'The green-haired man cuddling that dragon!'

'Oh, don't talk nonsense!' said Professor Greenbloom. 'Atticus isn't a Wight, he's a vampire!'

'Yes, that's good cover, isn't it?' sneered Mr Faulwetter. 'If people notice he's wearing coloured contact lenses, they'll just assume it's to cover vampire slitted pupils, rather than to disguise having _no_ pupils. And who's to say he couldn't be a vampire, too? After all, there was that Wight in America who went on being a cannibal serial killer, long after he'd stopped physically needing to eat human flesh. Why shouldn't another Wight retain a taste for blood?'

'I've never drunk human blood in my life!' snapped Atticus. 'My parents were very strict about that!'

'Vampires aren't even the same species as us,' pointed out Professor Greenbloom. 'Wights are Peculiar humans who became Hollows who became – something resembling humans.'

'And Atticus was fighting to rescue Professor Greenbloom from the Hollow,' I added.

'Doubtless because he didn't want witnesses,' sneered Mr Faulwetter. 'Well, whatever he is, I'll take charge of him. James, can you and your boys help?'

' _No!_ ' said Ivan. 'Weren't you listening? He was _helping_ Barnabas. He may be some creepy undead guy, but that doesn't mean he's a bad person.'

'He's got you enspelled – you don't know what you're saying,' said Dr Marrs. 'Well – Josh, Joseph? Remember the game we played? Now we're up against some real opposition.'

Atticus seemed not to hear, so absorbed was he in cuddling up against Kuriana's flank, with her wing cuddled around him like a mother hen. Dr Marrs took up a position behind them, with Josh on his left and Joseph on his right. Mr Faulwetter strode up to the dragon and the vampire, swinging his cross-pendant. 'Atticus, by the power of this cross, I command you, _come forth!_ ' he said.

Atticus took a slow step forward.

'You'll have to come a bit closer, you know. If you hesitate, my friend and his sons have water-pistols loaded with holy water. It can crumble you to dust in an instant. Just come with me, and I won't hurt you unless I have to.'

Atticus took another slow step forward. 'You really didn't need the water-pistols, you know,' he grumbled. 'I'd have come anyway.'

'Away from your nursemaid, then. Just a bit closer…'

Atticus came nearly close enough for Mr Faulwetter to touch him. Then he cringed suddenly, as if he was terrified of the cross. Kuriana blew a jet of flame that shot right over his head and blew straight into Mr Faulwetter. As the flames touched him, he erupted for a moment into the shape of the huge, foul-smelling, tentacled monster that Johan had been before. Then it was over, and he was human again, except that, instead of standing proudly in front of a vampire and brandishing a cross, he was sitting on the ground with his head in his hands, sobbing and moaning, 'Oh, no. Oh, _no!_ What have I done?'

'What are you now?' Johan asked.

'Well, if your experience is anything to go by, I'm a Peculiar again,' said Mr Faulwetter. His voice was different now, I noticed. 'So I won't be needing these any more.' He took off a pair of pieces of thin glass from his eyes. They were painted bright blue, with black dots in the centre to look like pupils. His real eyes, as far as I could see in the evening gloom, were more of a greyish-blue, with a ring of light brown.

'Then since everyone here knows I'm a vampire, I won't bother with mine, either,' said Atticus. 'Though I _am_ fond of the colour, I must say.' He took off his green lenses, to reveal red eyes. Apart from the colour, they looked like normal human eyes, the round black pupils slightly dilated to meet the twilight. 'Well, to be precise, I'm a dhampir: a human/vampire hybrid. It's only the purebred vampires who have cat pupils.'

'Ugh – you mean vampires have sex with humans?' exclaimed Ivan.

'Actually, cross-species breeding isn't that unusual,' said Professor Greenbloom. 'It's possible that quite a lot of Peculiars are mostly-humans with some nonhuman ancestry. Sometimes it's a matter of two people from different species falling in love, perhaps even getting married if they could find a tolerant priest, though there've been some nasty cases of rape, too. For example, take all those cases of selkies being forced into marriage with human men, and having children with them. Most of them managed to escape back to the sea eventually, but left behind them children who were human to look at, but had an affinity with the sea, and their remote descendants might still show it.'

'Well, _my_ parents loved each other,' said Atticus defiantly. 'And I loved – no-one who's come off well from it, come to think of it. I've always destroyed the lives of anyone I loved.'

'Did you kill people, though?' demanded Mr Faulwetter. 'Or lead people to kill people?'

'Sometimes. Never deliberately. And I never ate them.'

'Well, I did do it deliberately, and I did eat them,' said Mr Faulwetter bleakly. 'When – when I was a Hollow, I don't remember much about it, like Johan here. I was just a sort of mobile appetite, like a shark. But when I was a Wight – I was searching for victims for a Hollow – the Hollow that had been Johan, who had only been forced to remain a Hollow because I ate his splanch – to eat, so that he could become what I was. So forgive Johan if you like, but I don't think anyone alive has the right to forgive me.'

'Is it any help,' I asked, 'if I tell you that I used to be a spy for a monster who was trying to hunt down all the dragons in the world, and that I set him on two of the people here, and that they forgave me, and that they're my friends and I live with them now, and that I've – been able to change the sort of person I was, because of their friendship?'

'No,' said Mr Faulwetter. 'It isn't.'

'Would it help,' offered Professor Greenbloom, 'if I offered you something to drink? We've got tea or hot chocolate.'

'Oh, tea would be wonderful,' breathed Mr Faulwetter gratefully. 'Have you got milk and sugar?'

'You like tea with milk?' said Dr Marrs, surprised. 'I thought that was just a British thing.'

'I _am_ British! I'm English!'

'But – Faulwetter can't be a very common name, surely?' asked Dr Marrs.

'What are you talking about? What's Faulwetter got to do with anything? My name's Spotiswode. Has been since 1880. You can check the records in Miss Heron's orphanage if you don't believe me.'


	17. Chapter 17

Yet more of Saturday 25th October 2015

' _You're_ Professor James Spotiswode?' exclaimed both Johan and Professor Greenbloom. 'But – I thought Spotiswode was one of the good guys?' Johan continued. 'He refused to live in a time loop where he could stay young forever, because he wanted to go out into the world where he could find other young Peculiars and help them work out what to do with their powers. And then he gave up a job in a university to be a schoolteacher, so that he could identify them and help them even younger. And he was a _good_ teacher – he cared about all his pupils, Commons and Peculiars alike. Someone like that would never have ended up as a Hollow!' he added, his voice rising to a hysterical pitch. 'You're lying! Maybe you're still a Wight pretending to be a Peculiar! How can you prove you're not?'

'Put it like this,' said Faulwetter/Spotiswode/whoever. 'What was James Spotiswode's Peculiarity?'

'Telepathy,' said Johan.

'Very well. Barnabas – you know I was sacked from my job – when I was a teacher _again_ as Faulwetter, rather than originally as Spotiswode – for taking photographs of a young boy changing into a werewolf. Can you tell me what happened to that boy?'

'I wouldn't tell you even if I did!' exploded Professor Greenbloom.

'But I can tell _you_. Your friend keeps you up-to-date on his welfare, and in her last email she told you that he's at grammar school now, and still good friends with her, as far as her allergy will allow. He's still a werewolf, but he's got the condition well under control, and he now has a pet rabwolf, from the rabbit he caught in the park but then decided to have mercy on. He still goes by the nickname "Moth", and feels that it suits him better now that he is no longer afraid of night-time and the moon. Oh, and your friend recently married that museum-curator boyfriend of hers, and you and your family went to their wedding last April.

'And you, Orrick,' continued Professor Spotiswode to Atticus, 'no, don't worry, I won't say anything about _that!_ I was just going to say that you chose your current name from _To Kill a Mockingbird_ , but sometimes you think you should have named yourself after Boo Radley. Your favourite pseudonym was Silas, after Silas Marner, but you dropped it when Neil Gaiman wrote a book featuring a vampire called Silas. Yes, I think Mordion is a beautiful name – from Diana Wynne Jones? No, I haven't read any of hers, but it sounds good – but you could try something more ordinary, like Mark, for a change.

'Yes, Johan, other people are wondering why I'm doing this, too, but _you_ , as a Peculiar, should know better. Wights don't have Peculiar abilities, do they? But when I was restored by dragon-fire, my telepathy came back, just like your shape-shifting. Yes, all right, I'll stop doing it now.'

'Do you mean you can turn it on and off?' asked Professor Greenbloom after a pause.

'I had to learn to,' said Professor Spotiswode. 'When I was a baby, I didn't know how _not_ to read minds, but as a young child I had to learn how to listen selectively when I was in a room with several other people and animals, or any one mind would be drowned out by noise from all the others. Then when I was at school I realised that sometimes I had to shut my telepathy down altogether to avoid cheating, or I'd end up cheating myself. It might not matter so much in class if I read the teacher's mind to understand a concept that he was trying to get across but wasn't explaining very well, but in an exam, if I copied the answers from someone else's brain, I would never know whether I'd have worked them out for myself. Of course, when I was a teacher myself, it was useful to be able to see whether children had understood what I was saying – not to mention knowing which ones had really done their homework and then left it behind, and which ones hadn't bothered to do it. When I was Faulwetter, _at the time_ I thought that was the biggest drawback to no longer being telepathic.'

'And it wasn't, was it?' said Professor Greenbloom sympathetically.

'No. The real problem was that I'd kept my telepathy, my empathy and my conscience so tightly interwoven that when I lost one, I lost them all. Commons – normal humans – get used to never _quite_ knowing what goes on in other people's minds, but still believing that they _have_ minds and _are_ people. But when I was Faulwetter, I didn't see people as anything more than food for my Hollow. I _could_ have fed him on Common people, but they weren't really any more nutritious than animals, and feeding him on rats – I'm sorry!' Professor Spotiswode added, remembering Lola – 'or foxes, or even a farmer's sheep, attracted far less attention. But feeding him Peculiars like you, Barnabas, could free him to become a Wight, and I thought that would be _better_ for him, God help me!'

'Did I eat anyone I knew?' asked Johan.

There was a pause, presumably while Professor Spotiswode scanned Johan's memories to check which people he knew. 'No,' he said at last. 'But it wouldn't be worth blaming yourself if you had, because you _weren't_ yourself while you were a Hollow. You weren't able to think, and so you were as innocent as any hungry predator. Your tongues and teeth may have been the murder weapon, but I was the murderer.'

'I'm not sure _you_ were yourself, either, my dear Spotiswode,' Professor Greenbloom said. 'You may have been able to think rationally enough about science to work as a teacher, but if the part of your mind that could make moral choices was missing, I'd say that still made you insane and not responsible for your actions. The real question is who you are now.'

'I've got another question,' said a voice far down in the grass.

'Mouse!' I cried. 'Are you all right? Be careful, everyone – don't pick him up too roughly, or you might squash him.'

'I don't think that's a problem any more,' said Mouse. Professor Greenbloom, who was nearest to him, lifted him up and handed him to my Master, who cradled him in one arm and me in the other. As Mouse reached out a hand to shake mine, his grip was as hard as if his hand was – baked clay.

'I thought you'd be burned or melted!' I blurted out. 'Well – to be honest, I thought you'd just turn back into a mouse, but – why this?'

'Do I take it that my fire reversed another enchantment?' asked Kuriana.

'I suppose so,' I said. 'But – in my experience, dragon-fire usually turns enchanted creatures back into what they were originally – or at least, that's what silver dragons do.'

'Well,' said Kuriana, 'I was taught that purple dragons' fire turns creatures into what they truly are.'

'And I suppose I was a mixture of homunculus and golem,' said Mouse. 'And now that my mouse-heart has melted away, that leaves me as completely golem.'

'You don't have a heart any more?' I asked.

Mouse considered this. 'If that means having a muscle that pumps blood around the body, then no, I don't, and it wasn't really much use to me without any tubes for it to pump the blood into. But if it means being able to feel things, then – I love you, I'm grateful to Kuriana for what she's done, and – I want to go home. I want to rescue my brothers, and mould them so that they've got mouths and can speak, and then bring them to a dragon who can harden them. I want to talk to Enoch and tell him that we're people, not just machines he can launch at his enemies. I used to think he was a monster, but – well – I don't think he understands what he's doing. He's just frightened of the Hollows, and he wants to make us into an army to defend him. But he's in danger of turning _into_ someone evil, someone who lives by exploiting homunculi just as Hollows live by eating Peculiars.'

'When the real evils aren't even the Hollows, but Wights like me,' said Professor Spotiswode. 'Uh – Mouse, did you say you had another question?'

'Well, yes,' said Mouse, who seemed to have almost forgotten it. 'How old are you?'

Professor Spotiswode considered. 'Well, if it's 2015, that makes me – uh – a hundred and fifty-seven.'

'But you don't look more than about forty,' said Johan. 'I mean, I'm a shapeshifter, so I can make myself look as young as I want, but – how do _you_ do it?'

'I don't think I do,' said Professor Spotiswode. 'I just aged normally before – before I became a Hollow. So, if I was forty then, and I've spent ninety-two years as a Hollow and fifteen as a Wight, and I'm no older…'

'Then I don't think you _were_ them,' said Mouse. 'I don't think they were you. There wasn't any "you" in them, so what they did isn't your fault. After all, can you imagine behaving the way Rudolf Faulwetter did?'

Professor Spotiswode shuddered. 'No,' he said. 'I can't. But I know I _did_ , because I've got his memories.'

'Yes, but they're not Spotiswode's memories,' Mouse insisted. 'If you want something to feel guilty about, I think you should feel guilty about whatever you did to turn yourself into a Hollow in the first place.'

'Yes!' said Johan. 'I became one because you ate my splanch, but how did _you_ become one? I thought the Hollows were evil megalomaniacs who wanted to be gods?'

'It wasn't like that,' Professor Spotiswode said. 'Yes, we wanted to be able to live forever without living in time loops – we wanted to be able to go out and explore the world, grow up, fall in love and get married and have children, all without the risk of growing old and dying. Yes, it was foolish and arrogant. But none of us dreamed that we would turn ourselves into man-eating – child-eating – monsters. None of us would have tried it if we had thought that we might.' His voice was shaking. 'So no, maybe I don't bear Rudolf Faulwetter's guilt, or the guilt of the Hollow that turned into Faulwetter,' he said. 'But I certainly bear the guilt of James Spotiswode, who created the experiment that produced the Hollows. And nobody here can forgive me for that.'

'I do,' said Johan. 'I'd probably have done something stupid like that, if I'd known how, and if I hadn't been a shapeshifter.'

'I do,' said Atticus. 'When my – best friend died, I tried to use death magic to bring him back, and – well, you know the rest. So does Kuriana.'

It was twilight, so I couldn't see Professor Spotiswode's face very clearly, but I had the impression that he felt we were missing the point.

'If it was my place to forgive you, Professor, I would,' I said. 'But – when you said none of us _can_ forgive you, did you mean that none of us here is your victim – Johan was a victim of the Wight, and Professor Greenbloom was nearly a victim of Faulwetter, and so was my young Master here, but none of us was Spotiswode's victim?'

Professor Spotiswode nodded.

'The only person who was _your_ victim was you,' I said. 'So I suppose that means you have to forgive yourself.'

Professor Spotiswode shook his head. 'I don't think that's allowed,' he said. 'When I was a boy, I was taught that we are to forgive _each other_ – not ourselves.'

'Well,' Kuriana said, 'supposing you were to help me find the other Wights and Hollows who remain, and I were to restore them to their former selves?'

'Yes!' said Johan. 'I left my time-loop to hunt Hollows. But if we could hunt them to cure them of _being_ Hollows, instead of hunting them to kill them, that'd be much better!'

'Well, if we did that – would you want your restored brothers to spend the rest of their lives hating themselves for the mistake they once made?' asked Kuriana.

'No!' said Professor Spotiswode. 'Of course I wouldn't!'

'Then why do you condemn yourself to that life?' Kuriana asked.

Professor Spotiswode considered this for a long time. 'I don't know,' he said. 'I just feel very tired, right now.'

' _I_ just feel very hungry,' said Johan. 'Since I'm not likely to eat Barnabas now – have you got any more pasta?'

So, in the little twilight remaining, everyone (apart from Mouse, Atticus, and Kuriana) had dinner. I had midges. So did everyone else, whether they wanted to or not, and whether they were habitually vegetarian or not. It's very hard to remain vegetarian when midges insist on committing suicide in your mouth, or in mugs of tea or soup which you can't quite see to spoon them out of. As the remainder of the cloud of midges were busily feeding on us, it seemed a fair exchange.


	18. Chapter 18

Events of Sunday 25th October 2015

After everything that happened on Saturday, I think Atticus spent most of the night flying on Kuriana; he had been friends with her and with the original Dragon-rider, centuries earlier. Apparently, around midnight they came back to wake my Master up and take him to meet Slatebeard, but I was sleeping so soundly that they didn't wake me. By the time I woke up, all the children had gone down to the valley apart from Liam.

'You're like me – not a morning person,' he yawned. 'Oh well, shall we find some breakfast and go and join them? I'll carry you, if you like.'

I wondered whether I did or not. If it had been my Master, I would have sat on his lap while we ate breakfast, and just being close to him would have been the most wonderful thing in the world. As it was – well, Liam seems a nice enough boy, but I hadn't even met him properly until yesterday. I let him carry me over to a folding table, to avoid walking through wet grass that was taller than I was, but I sat on the table rather than on his lap, to munch a dry cornflake.

Johan emerged from the caravan as we were finishing our breakfast, looking exhausted but quietly satisfied. He was satisfied because he had finally managed to persuade Professor Spotiswode to eat a sandwich, have a mug of hot chocolate, lie down on his bunk and go to sleep, after a night of 'freaking out' and keeping Johan awake.

'I tried turning into a dog, in case having someone furry to stroke made him feel better,' Johan said. 'But it just started him ranting about all the times he'd stalked werewolves, in case they were really shapeshifter Peculiars. He said if the boy he'd been stalking had turned out to be a Peculiar, and not just an ordinary boy who'd been bitten by a werewolf, he'd probably have fed him to me, and he was the boy's teacher then, and nobody could ever forgive him.'

'So, are all Peculiars shapeshifters?' asked Liam.

'No. I'm the only one I know,' Johan said.

'And Professor Spotiswode,' Liam argued.

'No, he's not a shapeshifter. He is a telepath, though – and he's very good at anything to do with science and engineering, though I think that's just a matter of intelligence.'

'So last night, when he went invisible and then visible again, what was going on?' asked Liam.

'He went from being a Wight to being a creature called a Hollow – they're invisible to humans, but I could see him and so could Atticus – to being himself, the person he originally was,' I said. 'It wasn't a matter of voluntary shapeshifting of the sort that Johan can do now that he's himself again. It isn't even like the involuntary transformation that forces someone to turn into a werewolf. If anything, it was more like being cured of being a werewolf. Dragon-fire returns enchanted beings to what they were originally, and so in this case it lifted the curse that Professor Spotiswode had accidentally put on himself.'

'What do you mean, "enchanted beings"?' asked Liam. 'Do you mean all magical creatures, like dragons?'

'No, dragons and brownies and fairies evolved naturally,' I said. 'I'm talking about beings who were created artificially, like Mouse and me. Often we're created by transfiguring some other creature – I told you I was made from an insect, and Mouse was shaped out of clay and animated with a mouse's heart. The homunculi who are made from part of a human, usually from their own creator, tend to develop the strongest bonds with the Master or Mistress whose DNA they share – so much that they feel any pain that their Master feels, however far apart they may be at the time. But there are other kinds of enchanted creature as well. Most of them have red eyes…'

'You mean, like those blackbirds?' Liam asked.

'Actually, they're ravens,' I said, glancing down at the birds pecking for crumbs. 'They are birds that are black, but "blackbird" in the Old World refers to any of several species of thrushes found in Europe, Africa, and Asia, although in the Americas it usually means a member of the icteridae…'

I can't have been fully awake up till that point, but then it dawned on me what was going on. I leapt into Liam's arms, stranger or no stranger. 'Yes, _those_ blackbirds, I mean ravens!' I screamed from somewhere inside his jacket. 'Please, get Professor Greenbloom, get…'

'Fliegenbein?' said one of the ravens, sounding as startled, and – to my surprise – as frightened, as I felt. 'Is the Gold Lord here?'

'No, he, uh, hasn't come back from the Himalayas,' I mumbled, feeling relieved that my idiotic lecture about enchanted creatures hadn't gone any further.

'Does he want another bottle of armour-polish yet? Gouchy and Sleazy have brewed another batch, but now they want to quit, because Hangry – their boss – is starting to ask awkward questions about what they're doing when they're supposed to be down the mine. And they're scared because Gravelbeard hasn't come back, and it's been five months now. Do you know if he's still alive?'

'Oh, yes,' I said. 'Or he was alive and well last time I saw him. He's got a new job now, freeing petrified dragons from their stone shell.'

'The Gold Lord wants some more prey to chase, does he?' said the raven. 'If he's got enough to keep him going where he is, do you think he won't mind if we don't rush over at once to tell him about the two here? Only Miranda's been having trouble flying since…'

'Since your brownie friend threw a stone at my wing,' said the other raven, who had been staring at me up till then without a word. 'Quite apart from the bruising – I was lucky it didn't break any bones – it was stuck so firmly that I couldn't peck it off on my own, and when Pete managed to tug the filthy thing away, most of my feathers came with it.'

'What about me? My beak was gummed up and I couldn't speak for two days. Or eat,' the first raven – Pete – added as an afterthought.

'And what have _you_ been up to, anyway?' demanded – Miranda. The raven who had been my means of transport when I was sent to spy on Firedrake and his friends, until he – no, _she_ – flew off and abandoned me in Egypt. And if she hadn't abandoned me – then I wouldn't have needed to resort to climbing into Ben's rucksack – and we wouldn't have become friends – and I wouldn't have decided I wanted him to be my Master instead of Nettlebrand. I was fairly sure, though, that the raven – Miranda – wasn't going to accept that as an excuse. It was odd. In all the time that this raven had kept following me to check up on me, it had never occurred to me to wonder whether she was male or female, or whether she had a name, and I certainly wouldn't have imagined that her name might be Miranda. She had just been one of the flock of terrifying black, red-eyed birds, any of whom could easily have bitten my head off (not metaphorically). But then, when my brothers had been alive, I don't think the ravens could tell us apart, either.

'When Miranda was resting while her wing recovered, we sent Jack and Maria out to look for you,' said Pete. 'They haven't come back yet, either, but I suppose the Gold Lord might have eaten them by now. Do you know whether he has any orders for us? We haven't been able to call him for over two months.'

I wished my new Master was here to protect me, when these messengers from my old Master came. What was the good of defeating Nettlebrand, if there were still hundreds of his minions all over the world, any of whom could kill me in revenge at any moment? I felt sick with fear, but I also felt angry – with myself for being afraid, and with the ravens for making me afraid.

'The "Gold Lord" isn't going to be giving any more orders,' I said. 'He got melted by dragon-fire in the Himalayas.'

The two ravens looked at each other, but I couldn't see what expression was on their faces. 'You're lying,' Miranda said finally. 'His armour was designed to be fireproof.'

'I tricked someone into painting him with brownie-spit,' I said. 'He'd killed my brothers, and he was going to kill my new friends as well, if I didn't stop him – the first friends I'd had for three hundred and forty-eight years! So you can kill me if you want, but it won't bring him back, and it'll have been worth it to know that he's gone forever.'

'Why should I listen to _you_?' snapped Miranda. 'You'd lie about anything.'

'Not about this. I swear on the jar I was made in.'

'Think about it!' said Pete. 'It explains why we didn't get an answer in any of the pools we tried. Just think – if he really has gone, we could do anything we wanted – fly off wherever we chose!' He began wheeling in the air, as he croaked out in the nearest he could manage to singing:

'Do you remember a ledge, Miranda?

Do you remember a ledge?

Where we guessed it's best to build up a nest,

Free from the Gold Lord's greed and grandeur?

Do you remember a ledge, Miranda?

Sheer was the cliff from its edge.'

Miranda shook her head and replied:

'Do you remember the fear, dear Peter?

Do you remember the fear?

And the creaking and the grating of the beast lying waiting,

And the claws that scale up a wall made of shale,

And the snap, snip, snap

Of jaws like a trap,

And the grief when we lost someone dear?'

'Nevermore, Miranda!' cried Pete;

'Nevermore!

Now that we're free to soar,

No dread

Of the tread

Of feet that are bound

To the ground.'

'But,' I said, when I managed to get my mouth working again, 'if you hated Nettlebrand that much, why didn't you leave him centuries ago?'

'Why didn't _you_?' retorted Miranda.

'Because he'd killed my brothers and I didn't fancy my chances of surviving if I ran away on my own! If I didn't get eaten by a fox or something, one of you would have caught me and brought me back to Nettlebrand so that he could eat me himself!'

'And you think _we_ didn't worry about being eaten?' snapped Miranda. 'Once you were the only homunculus he had left, he couldn't afford to waste you, so instead he gobbled up one of us whenever we couldn't give him news of dragons – and then he lay around complaining that our feathers gave him indigestion!'

'But you could fly,' I pointed out. 'If you'd all left at once, what could he do about it? I know he was a good rock-climber, considering how old and heavy he was, but if you'd nested in the tops of trees, what could he have done about it?'

'Look, does it even matter?' interrupted Liam. 'If this Nettlebrand is dead…'

'Not exactly _dead_ ,' I explained. 'He was a sort of cyborg, not a pure transfigured creature like me or the ravens. So when the dragon-fire melted his armour, the toad that had been turned into Nettlebrand was able to return to being a toad, and it's probably living happily ever after. I hope so, anyway.'

'You're right,' said Miranda. 'We ought to call the others and tell them. Let's start with Maria and Jack.'

'Do you know where they are?' Pete asked. 'It was three months ago when Maria called us from that puddle on a beach in Pakistan.'

'She was hoping that if she and Jack could help the Gold Lord – Nettlebrand – find the Rim of Heaven, he might let them go free and get married,' said Miranda. 'They'd been engaged for three hundred and ninety-eight years – they got engaged a year before we did, didn't they, Pete? And they really thought it was about time they found somewhere they could build a nest and find out whether enchanted ravens can have chicks or not.'

'They were tracking _you_ ,' Pete added to me. 'Do you know where they went after that?'

I wanted to lie – both because I still felt rather afraid of the ravens, and to spare their feelings, and because I was ashamed of not having realised long ago that they hated Nettlebrand just as much as I did and that we should have helped each other escape. But now that I had started telling the truth, I couldn't stop myself. 'Well – they got hit by dragon-fire, too,' I said.

Miranda opened her beak and shut it again, and at last said, 'Wh-what did they turn into?'

'Sort of – crustaceans,' I said.

'What? You mean, crabs?' asked Liam.

'Well, they didn't look like _crabs_ , exactly,' I said thoughtfully. 'More like some kind of lobsters, I think. Or maybe crayfish.'

'Oh well, maybe that's not so bad,' said Miranda, half-hiding her head under her wing. 'After all, lobsters are a symbol of undying love, because they mate for life.'

'Actually, that's a myth,' I said. 'Lobsters usually attack each other, so when a female lobster is on heat, she sprays urine full of sex hormones at the male, so that he understands that she wants to mate, and won't try to eat her when she takes her armour off. When she's undressed and they've mated, the male protects her until she's grown a new shell, but it isn't exactly the same as a lifelong relationship…' I realised that this lecture wasn't exactly tactful, under the circumstances. 'But I don't know whether it'll be like that for your friends,' I added hastily. 'After all, if they've loved each other for hundreds of years in raven form, perhaps they'll still remember that they love each other when they're lobsters.'

'Perhaps,' said Miranda. 'We'd better get in touch with all the others and have a memorial service for Jack and Maria, anyway. And we'll make a vow not to eat shellfish again, just to make sure we don't eat our friends.'

'I'm very sorry,' I said. 'I wish I'd realised earlier that we could have been allies instead of enemies.'

'I wish we'd treated you better,' said Miranda. 'But, if you've got rid of Nettlebrand – I suppose that makes up for what happened to Jack and Maria. More than makes up for it, because he'd have killed far more of us otherwise. So – shall we be friends? It'll really annoy that brownie, mind you.'

'Thank you,' I said. 'That sounds like a good enough reason to be friends, to me.'


	19. Chapter 19

Sunday 25th October 2015 continued

It's now evening, and I've spent most of the day writing up notes of yesterday and this morning, so haven't had much time to notice what was going on. Ivan and Josh, with the help of my Master, have been explaining to their father about dragons' healing powers. Dr Marrs seems fascinated by the idea of either keeping a dragon in every hospital, or analysing their fire until it was possible to synthesise it. Ivan pointed out that not all species of dragon have healing powers, at which his father said sharply, 'Really? How long have you been an expert?' and Ivan muttered something approximating to an apology. I don't think he's told his family about having met a dragon before.

My Master asked, 'If the silver dragons wish not to live in a human city, what will you do? You don't go to lock them in cages, do you?'

Dr Marrs looked as if he was biting back a sarcastic reply, and only said, 'I need to talk to Rudolf.'

This wasn't easy to organise, as Professor Spotiswode had been huddling in the caravan all day, paying little attention to Johan's and Professor Greenbloom's attempts to talk to him. When Dr Marrs knocked on the caravan door and called to him, he would only reply, 'Leave it. I'm not Faulwetter any more, and I don't want to get involved.'

'But that's good, then!' called Johan. 'If you accept that you're _not_ Faulwetter, you can accept that you don't have to feel guilty any more about the things he did. You can just go back to being James Spotiswode.'

'No. I can't,' mumbled Spotiswode. 'Even if I'm not to blame for what I did as a Hollow and a Wight, I'm still to blame for being the person who made myself into a Hollow. I can't make up for that.'

'Oh, come on out and be a bit less ose!' cawed one of the ravens (Pete, I think).

This got a reaction, at any rate. 'What do you mean, "ose"?' asked Professor Spotiswode, opening the door.

'Well, after what we've been through, lots of us are feeling a bit ose,' explained Pete. 'But you can always learn to be less ose, instead of morose.'

'It's probably your reaction to being otiose,' suggested the other raven (probably Miranda).

Whereas you take refuge in being jocose,' Professor Spotiswode retorted.

'You probably need some glucose,' I suggested. 'The effect of low blood sugar on humans…'

'And _he_ just becomes more verbose,' said Miranda, nodding her beak at me.

'Panty-'ose, garden 'oes, letter Os,' put in Liam. When everyone looked blank, he explained, 'Uh – it's from an old comedy sketch my grandad showed me and – oh, never mind.'

Professor Spotiswode allowed himself to be coaxed outside, to have a mug of tea and a biscuit and be morose (or at least fairly ose) in the open air. 'Don't _you_ at least condemn me, Twigleg?' he asked, as if he was desperate to find someone who would. 'You were created to be the spy for a predatory monster, but you rebelled in the end. I turned _myself_ into a monster, and that proves I don't deserve to be anything better.'

A couple of months ago, I would probably have agreed with that. But now, looking at Professor Spotiswode's despairing face, I couldn't believe it. I climbed up onto his shoulder so that I could talk to him more privately. I didn't know what I could say that could possibly help, but maybe just being willing to _try_ to talk to him would be a start. 'Mouse told me that the ymbryne who was his creator's guardian said that being a Hollow is hell, and being a Wight is purgatory. At first I didn't understand what that meant, because – well, obviously, poets who write allegories about the next world haven't actually been there, so they're using the idea of hell and purgatory and heaven as a metaphor to explain why the decisions we make determine who we become. But generally – purgatory seems to be pictured as a different _kind_ of place from hell. It's a place where people suffer because they're struggling to overcome the bad habits that spoiled their earthly lives, rather than because they're stuck with the way they've always lived and are unable to change. So, some of the people in hell might be people who did their best to live righteously, and just didn't realise that they couldn't be perfect enough by their own efforts – and now they're not subjected to any punishment, but have nothing to hope for, either. And there might be others, who had done terrible things, but realised in time that they were going wrong, and cried out to God to help them change – and so, even if they're going through a difficult time in purgatory, they accept it because God won't give up on them until he has made them ready to enter heaven.

'That's _one_ way the metaphor is used,' I went on. 'But another is that hell and purgatory could be the same place – that if people are confronted with the defects of their own personalities, that will be hell for the people who conclude, "this is all there is." But for the people who decide, "I can't stand what I've become – I need to go and throw myself on God's mercy," then hell will have been purgatory for them. Of course, heaven is purgatory for them too, at first, until they get used to it.'

'But I didn't _decide_ to repent,' Professor Spotiswode pointed out. 'That purple dragon's fire decided it for me.'

'Yes. She gave you back your own mind, so that now you can decide how you're going to live,' I said. 'You can decide to sit around in a caravan feeling guilty about things and not doing anything to put them right. Or you can decide to be grateful to God and Kuriana for giving you a second chance, and see if there's anything useful you can do. Oh, and – I don't think most humans feel the need to have a Master, the way homunculi do. But if you're looking for one, I'd recommend Professor Greenbloom. He's a lot brighter than Johan, and almost certainly more trustworthy than Dr Marrs.'

At this point, Atticus's tent-flap flew open and he came running up to us, looking as if he had only recently woken up. 'Will you stop _talking_ like that?' he hissed at me.

'I'm sorry,' I said. 'Was I too loud?' My voice is nowhere near as loud as a human's, and unless I'm very close to them, either they have to strain to hear me, or I have to speak up. But somehow I had disturbed Atticus's sleep from the far end of the campsite.

'It's the subject, not the volume,' Atticus explained. 'Especially when your – companion is still wearing – that thing.'

'Oh, I'm sorry!' Professor Spotiswode took the crucifix that hung on a ribbon round his neck, and tucked it into a jacket pocket. 'I didn't mean to hurt you.'

'I was eleven, the first time I saw that image,' said Atticus. 'There was a church in the village near my parents' farm, but they always told me it was a wicked place and I must never go there. So, when I got the chance, I slipped in, and there was a huge wooden carving of a man nailed to a piece of wood, with blood running down from his hands and feet, his side, and his scalp. I didn't know who he was, but the blood was painted so realistically that I thought he looked _delicious_. I'd never tasted blood then, but I knew my da drank it – never human blood, usually fox or badger or hare – instead of eating solid food, the way mam and I did, and I knew mam said I'd need to live on blood when I was older, so I was looking forward to that. So when I saw this statue, it looked like a sort of advert for the feast ahead. And then the priest told us a story about a man called Jesus meeting a woman who had been bleeding for twelve years, and that made me feel even hungrier, and I was looking forward to hearing about Jesus drinking her blood, but instead he healed her. And then the priest drank something that he insisted was Jesus's blood, even though it smelled like wine to me, and he wouldn't let us have any! All we were allowed was little white pieces of wafer that the priest said were Jesus's body, and I wasn't even allowed those when the priest realised I'd never been christened or learned my catechism or been to confession. He told me to talk to my parents about it, and come back with them.

'So I hurried home and told my parents where I'd been, and – well, vampires are pale anyway, but my da looked a sort of pale green when he heard I'd been to church. He said that I deserved the thrashing of my life for disobeying, but he didn't think giving me a little slap with his hand would bring home to me the seriousness of what I'd done, and if he beat me properly, there was a risk of drawing blood, and then he didn't think he'd be able to restrain himself. So he said I'd better go to my room until he and mam had decided what was an appropriate punishment. I went and lay down on my bed, and I was terrified. My da had never hit me my life, but now he looked so angry that I was afraid he might do something worse.

'And then I started feeling sick. I managed to throw up in the chamber-pot the first time, but then it was full and I needed to be sick again, and da hadn't come to tell me if I could go out to the privy, and my room didn't even have a window with shutters I could open to be sick out of, just a piece of animal skin nailed over the window so that it let in a little light but not too much. So all I could do was be sick over my bed.

'And then da came in, and I thought he'd be angry about the mess, but instead he just wiped me down with a wet cloth and soothed me, and fetched more buckets for the next time I felt sick. It went on for about two weeks, I think, but I felt so bad I lost track of time. I didn't know then that I was turning; that this is what happens to dhampir children when they start going into vampire mode. All I knew was that da didn't seem to be angry any more, but he wasn't worried by what was happening either, and even though he was gentle with me, he seemed quite satisfied. So I assumed that this was my punishment for going into a church, and even if da wasn't personally making it happen, he was glad that I was being punished without him having to hit me. And even though all that was nearly seven hundred years ago, from then one, whenever I've – looked at a religious image or symbol, or heard people talking about God, or anything like that, I've felt sick. So when you threatened me with those – spray-guns full of holy water – did you really mean that, by the way?'

'It was just ordinary tap water,' said Professor Spotiswode. 'I'm very sorry about that, but…'

'You weren't yourself last night. It's not your fault,' said Atticus. 'But even if it was just tap water – it would still have hurt me, because I believed it was holy. I'm not as vulnerable as a full vampire – I can't be actually killed by anything other than beheading, disembowelling, or fire. But all the things that would make a full vampire crumble to dust, like religion or sunlight, at least make me feel – uncomfortable.'

'Is that inevitable, or because of the way you've been taught to feel about them?' I asked.

'I don't know about sunlight. When it comes to religion, I thought Christianity was strange – the way they talked about blood, but in those days they wouldn't let lay members of the congregation actually drink it – but the priest didn't seem actually evil. But my parents told me afterwards that Christians hate vampires, and that Christians believe the very first vampire was one of Jesus's friends who betrayed him to his enemies and then felt sorry and committed suicide, and that's why vampire-hunters go around armed with crosses and holy water.'

'Well, _I'm_ a Christian, and I'd never heard of that,' said Liam. 'I don't hate you. And I bet Jesus wouldn't have hated you, either.'

'And now I suppose you're going to tell me that Jesus was a vampire himself, and that was why he rose from the grave,' said Atticus sarcastically.

I considered this. It was an interesting theory, but… 'I don't think so,' I said. 'He ate fish after he came back to life, and it didn't seem to make him ill the way solid food does to you. I think he was a human, who might also have been God. I think – he faced enough opposition as it was, from people who thought he was a heretic or people who thought he was trying to overthrow the Roman Empire, that if the priests could have convicted him of disobeying the Bible by drinking blood, they would have done.

'But – I don't think Jesus would have hated vampires. I don't think he'd have refused to touch a man who has to drink blood, any more than he refused to touch a woman who was bleeding. I don't think the gospels actually record his saying anything about vampirism. But they do say that he said that what you eat doesn't make you "unclean", because only the evil thoughts in our hearts – things like envy and malice and arrogance – can really corrupt us.

'And – Jesus knew what being hunted felt like. He and his family had to run away from hunters who wanted to kill him when he was still a baby. As a grown man, he avoided the hunters a few times, but they killed him in the end. They killed him with a cross, just as vampire-hunters when you were young threatened vampires with crosses – I don't know whether they still do that today, other than Faulwetter, and that was really just a cover for hunting Peculiars.' (Professor Spotiswode nodded unhappily at this, but said nothing.)

'So,' I went on, 'next time someone shows you a crucifix, instead of thinking, "Oh no, the humans have me in their power!" maybe you need to tell yourself, 'Jesus, who was never violent to anyone, came to save the whole world – not just humans, but vampires, homunculi, dragons, brownies, ravens, whoever needed saving. Jesus loves vampires. Jesus loves me." Can you do that?'

'Are you a Christian?' Atticus asked.

'I'm not sure,' I said. 'I've studied sacred texts from many different religions, and I'm still not sure which is the closest to the truth. I don't know whether Jesus is God. I don't know whether he really said all the things the Bible says he said, or whether what he meant by them is what Christians think he meant by them. But I _am_ sure that I can't imagine him siding with the vampire-hunters.'

'Maybe not, but the hunters _think_ he does,' said Atticus bleakly. 'They killed my father, back in the fourteenth century, and they killed my wife and my daughter in the twentieth century, and plenty of my friends in between. It was my fault…'

'Of course it wasn't!' I said. 'It was the fault of the hunters. No-one else.' I thought about this – bearing in mind that I was still sitting on the shoulder of a former vampire-hunter – and added to Professor Spotiswode, 'Or not even them, if they were out of their minds and didn't know what they were doing.'

'But not yours, anyway,' we both added to Atticus.

'Maybe,' he said. 'But don't you think _some_ of the blame lies with the Christian church, for going on teaching that drinking blood is a sin? Even after they'd done away with all the other food laws, so humans who wanted to eat pork or shellfish could, they still went on saying that nobody should drink blood.'

'Ah, yes: the Council of Jerusalem, circa 48AD,' I said. 'But don't you see – that proves that Christian teaching can change! Given that the first followers of Jesus were all Jews, at first it was a stretch just for them to accept that Gentiles could be Christians at all, but they realised that Jesus's message was for all humans, not just Jews (I don't think they'd even thought about non-humans). Then, when there were lots of Gentile Christians, they started to argue about whether Gentile Christians had to keep kosher, and whether the men had to be circumcised. If they'd said, "Yes, you do," it would have put a lot of people off, but if they'd said, "No, the old rules don't matter now," it would have annoyed the Jewish Christians. So instead they compromised by saying, "You don't have to be circumcised, and you can eat any meat as long as it hasn't been strangled, doesn't contain blood, and hasn't been sacrificed to idols." But within a few years of that, St Paul, writing to mainly Gentile Christians, told them it was up to them what they wanted to eat and that they shouldn't criticise each other over what they did or didn't eat.

'Also, Christians – I mean, human Christians – aren't literally vampires, as I understand it – they see Communion wine as representing Jesus's blood. But when they drink it, they're celebrating the fact that Jesus allowed his blood to be shed to save the world, so you they're metaphorically fed by his blood. I don't imagine that God sees you as any different, just because your hunger is physical as well as spiritual.'

'Maybe,' said Atticus. 'But I don't imagine that if I went to Confession now and said, "Father, I have sinned; I sucked all the blood from a sheep for dinner last week, drank two stray dogs and a fox in September, and left a cow very anaemic in August," that he'd just say, "Oh, don't be silly, there's nothing sinful about any of that." At the very least, he'd say he couldn't give me absolution unless I promised not to do it again.'

'I don't know,' I said. 'There might be some who might be sympathetic. I'll look it up on the internet.'

And I will do, tomorrow. But right now, I'm tired.


	20. Chapter 20

Monday 26th October 2015

Ivan's father drove home this morning, taking Josh and Joseph with him, though Ivan managed to persuade his father to let him stay at the campsite. Around midday, the ravens flew up to tell us that Slatebeard was awake and feeling well enough to receive daytime visitors, as long as we didn't stay too long and tire him out. Everyone went down to the valley, though Mouse, Johan and Professor Spotiswode were more interested in talking to Kuriana. She's trying to decide whether to join the silver dragons at the Rim of Heaven, go back to travelling around with Atticus, settle down somewhere rural with Atticus, settle down somewhere rural with Slatebeard, go on a quest with Johan (and possibly Professor Spotiswode, if he can convince himself that he isn't too evil and tainted for them to want him) to track down Wights and Hollows and restore them to their original selves, or go on a quest with Mouse to find the other plasticine men and help them become true golems. Atticus himself didn't come down with us in the daytime, but he had been enjoying another ride on Kuriana last night.

When I first caught sight of a big dragon with curling horns, I clutched at the fabric of my Master's jacket in fear, and he looked nearly as nervous as I felt. Of course, we knew that Nettlebrand wasn't really coming back, and, when we came closer through the mists, this dragon didn't look that much like him. It was just that, where Firedrake's slender horns just had a gentle curve forwards, this one's horns were even thicker than Nettlebrand's, and much more twisted. They curled like a ram's horns. When I thought about it, I remembered reading that male dragons' horns become more curled with age – and Slatebeard is a very, very old dragon, older even than Kuriana. His scales are dull and tarnished, and apparently so little able to absorb moonlight that he can barely stay awake, let alone fly.

(When I stopped to think about this, I wondered how it worked. After all, you would expect a matt black panel to absorb light, while something lighter and shinier would reflect most of it. But whatever discolours Slatebeard's scales seems to block light from passing through so that his metabolism can absorb it.)

Slatebeard hobbled forward slowly to meet us, one paw at a time. 'I am glad to meet humans who come in peace,' he said. 'Even when I was a dragonet, we thought that those days were long past, and that the only humans we would see were the armoured ones who came to chop our heads off. But Maia tells me that one of you helped young Firedrake find the Rim of Heaven _and_ melt the Gold Lord's armour. Can I ask – which of you is Ben?'

'I am,' said Ben. 'And this is my friend Twigleg.'

'Oh!' said Slatebeard, sounding dismayed as he leant towards me (but not too close). 'I'm pleased to meet you, Twigleg. Can you tell me – have you met a homunculus called Fliegenbein on your travels? I understand he helped find a way to defeat the Gold Lord, too.'

'Well, Fliegenbein is my original name,' I admitted. 'I only chose "Twigleg" to sound more English. But it was really Firedrake who worked out how to melt the armour.'

'As he told it, he modified a clever idea you'd devised earlier,' Slatebeard said. 'And we come by our names in all kinds of ways. My parents named me after a dwarf friend of theirs who was my godfather. Mind you, a lot of dragon parents nowadays are giving their hatchlings both an English name to help them fit in, like "Firedrake", and an ethnic name to make sure they don't forget their roots. I gather young Firedrake is serious enough about Maia to have told her that his ethnic name is "Lung".' He pronounced it with a soft U, like 'loong'.

'But – but Firedrake isn't a _lung_ , is he?' I asked. 'I'd read about the _lung_ , but I thought they had longer, snakier bodies, and no wings.'

'That's right!' said Slatebeard. 'My great-grandfather saw one, once, when he was a dragonet, back in the country where he was born. He said its horns looked like a stag's antlers, its neck and body were like a snake, and it had paws like a tiger but with claws more like an eagle, ears like a cow, and long whiskers, and that it could fly without wings.'

'I read that _lung_ hear through their horns, not their ears,' I said. 'I wonder whether they shed them each year and grow new ones? If so, they must be born deaf, and start to hear a little when their first antlers grow, and go deaf again when they shed them. But then their hearing would grow sharper every year, as each new set of antlers grew.'

'I wish it worked that way for me!' said Slatebeard. 'Maia told me that even where she comes from, nobody has seen a _lung_ for thousands of years. But maybe they'll come back, as those four-armed kobolds – _dubidai_ – have.'

The book I had read had also mentioned that _lung_ have magical power over water, which sounded worryingly like Nettlebrand. But on the other hand, they were agreed to be benevolent, just, and wise, which Nettlebrand certainly wasn't, and Slatebeard sounded as though their return could be nothing but a blessing.

Liam asked whether weredragons really existed, as well. Slatebeard considered this for quite a while.

'I've never met one,' he said finally, 'but I know it's said that the _lung_ are the ancestors of humans, and of clam-like and tortoise-like creatures. Perhaps there are humans who can change into _lung_ – or perhaps, if the _lung_ are humans' ancestors and ours, you might even be able to change into a winged, fire-breathing dragon like us.'

'That doesn't make sense,' said Ivan. 'How can dragons be related to clams and tortoises and us?'

'It's probably a matter of how many generations back you go,' suggested Professor Greenbloom. 'Obviously, our closest relatives are the great apes, and then other primates like monkeys and lemurs. But if you go back a few more generations, all mammals have the same ancestor, and then, a bit further back, all vertebrates, then all animals. If the _lung_ are a very early ancestor of vertebrates, then their assorted of reptilian, birdlike and mammalian characteristics could have been traits inherited by different descendants, even if that doesn't explain the clam. But I must admit that the ability to change form at will, the way Johan does, is comparatively rare. Even in werewolves, the rarest type are those who can switch from wolf to human when they feel like it. Those who become wolves at full moon and humans again afterwards, the way they do in stories, are commoner, but in practice, what happens most frequently is for someone who has been bitten by a werewolf to become gradually more wolfish towards the next full moon. If they can't control it, they can wind up with an almost completely lupine body, even if they still have a human mind – and then, if they can't escape to the forest fast enough, they're likely either to be shot, or to end up in a zoo or possibly a shelter for stray dogs. The only reason you don't hear so much about those werewolves is that people just assume they _are_ wolves or dogs.'

'What about vampires?' asked Ivan. 'They can turn into bats, can't they?'

'In _Dracula_ , they can turn into wolves as well,' Meera pointed out.

'I read a book where they turn into magpies,' added Miss Guinevere.

'Probably we should ask Mr Faulwetter – I mean, Professor Spotiswode,' suggested my Master.

'I don't think that would be tactful, right now,' said Professor Greenbloom. 'He still feels horrified by the things he did when he was Faulwetter, even though he knows intellectually that it wasn't his fault. I'd prefer to ask Atticus himself, if the question doesn't offend him, but I think he's still sleeping at the moment.'

'I'm feeling rather tired myself,' Slatebeard admitted. 'Staying up all day isn't easy when you're my age.'

We left him to rest, and climbed back up to the campsite. It was close to evening by now, and Atticus came to join us as my Master and I were reading _Conrad's Fate_ , and had got to the part where Christopher is explaining to Conrad how he came to be travelling the multiverse in search of his friend Millie.

'Ah, it's good to meet some more Jones fen,' Atticus observed. I had thought the plural of 'fan' was regular in English, but it seems it is a matter of degree of fandom. People who merely happen to enjoy a certain book, television series, or comic strip, are fans, but hard-core devotees who can describe the architecture of Severus Snape's two-up, two-down house in Spinners End, or who respond to a character in a web-comic proclaiming that 'We play dice with the universe – chocolate dice!' by actually making chocolate dice, are fen.

'Actually, I'm not sure we qualify as fen yet,' I admitted. 'I'm enjoying this, and I like Conrad, but – well, do we see Tacroy again?'

'Only briefly, towards the end,' Atticus said. 'This is really Conrad's story, after all. I imagine that at this point, Tacroy and Gabriel and the other grown-ups back in World 12A are busy trying to work out where in the multiverse first Millie and then Christopher have absconded to.'

'He is still working for Gabriel, then?' I asked. 'He didn't get into any more trouble about – you know?'

'No. And he isn't the sort of person to waste his time feeling guilty and unhappy over what happened in the past,' said Atticus. 'I'm a lot more worried about whether Mordion in _Hexwood_ will be all right, and how Mark in _A Sudden Wild Magic_ is going to get used to being one person again.'

'I haven't read those yet,' I admitted. 'But I'm afraid I am the sort of person who spends too much time brooding on the past.'

'So am I,' said Atticus. 'That's why I read fantasy novels, particularly ones with strange, damaged characters who either become king or get killed by a cobra-sized viper and are vindicated as good guys after their death. It's why I write fanfiction – though some people would say that's by definition the only type of literature a vampire _could_ write,' he added sourly.

'Stop it!' I said. 'Nobody here is prejudiced against vampires – the only person who was has gone home. His sons were only going along with what he said because they didn't want to defy him too openly. And Faulwetter – the persona of Faulwetter no longer exists. And even when Professor Spotiswode _was_ Faulwetter, I think he was only using an apparent obsession with vampires and werewolves as cover for hunting Peculiars.'

'Hey, _I_ don't like vampires!' Ivan interrupted. 'Why can't you dead guys just go back where you came from?'

'Well, in my case, that's a farm in Ireland, which is a lot closer than either Colombia or the United States,' said Atticus. 'But if you mean "back to the grave", I've never had one. I'm not someone who died and came back from the grave – I'm a vampire because my da was one.'

'Yeah, right – that's what he told you!' sniggered Ivan. 'Like a dead guy could father kids! Even if he had sperm, his dead dick would've dropped off centuries ago! He bit you when you were a kid, and they just made up the "heredity" story to keep you happy. Hey, have _you_ got a dick?'

'Well – _yes_ ,' said Atticus, with one eyebrow arched at the bizarre turn this conversation was taking.

'Yeah? I don't believe you. Wanna show me?'

'Really,' said Atticus smoothly, 'do you normally invite grown men to pull down their trousers?'

'Why are you so horrible to him?' my Master asked Ivan indignantly.

'Because he's a weird creep who's been stalking us, that's why!' snapped Ivan. 'He passed himself off as a teen just so that he could hang out with genu-ine high school students like us! He's obviously got a thing for kids!'

'So a minute ago you were accusing me of being sexless, and now you're insisting that I'm attracted to you?' Atticus inquired. 'Do make your mind up, please!'

'Well, if you're not a pervert, why were you stalking us?' Ivan asked.

'Why do you think? You were the first dragon-riders I'd met since Zenith died!'

'Zenith?' we all asked.

'The Dragon-rider whose tomb is in a Pakistani village,' Atticus explained. 'The first human to live with dragons since they started to retreat from human society towards the end of Hiccup's reign. My – best friend. The person who gave me back something to live for, when everyone I'd loved was dead or gone.'

I wondered whether Kuriana had talked to him about the rumours that my Master was the original Dragon-rider reincarnated, but he didn't comment on it if so. I can imagine how I'd feel if I didn't die when my Master did, and had to live on without him, wishing I could meet some future incarnation of him.

'But how did you even know we were dragon-riders?' Ivan asked.

'How do you think?' Atticus retorted. 'You smell of dragons. My skin would have prickled to tell me if there was a fantastic being with you – the way it did when I was with the brownies at your house, Ben. But it didn't prickle when I met the two of you at school, or at the leisure centre, so the only other explanation I could think of was that one of you was carrying a dragon-scale. Now, the only people I've ever known dragons to give their scales to are their riders, but it was possible that you'd simply picked up a scale that a dragon had lost in a fight. So I was hoping to get to know you better, until I knew whether I could trust you or not.'

'And can you?' asked Ben.

'I trust you as good people who love dragons,' said Atticus. 'Kuriana and Slatebeard certainly do, and Slatebeard told me how Ben helped his people. But – Ben, when I met your family, I could see that you were happy with them, and there was no point in saying, "Let me take you away from all this, I'll call a dragon and we can fly away together." And I was so nervous about meeting your parents that I accepted a few glasses of wine to relax me and distract them from the fact that I wasn't eating, and – well, when I drink alcohol, I forget that I can't eat human food, and – I made a complete fool of myself, didn't I?'

'Nobody had something against you,' said Ben. 'I think my parents just wanted to make sure you were not a Wight.'

'Maybe. But – even if I'm not a Wight, I've brought bad luck to virtually everyone I've ever been friends with, and I thought it was best to leave before I caused you any trouble. I'd meant to stay away from Kuriana for the same reason, but after that night at your house – I wasn't thinking very coherently. I ran until I was well away from a built-up area, but then – I got back in touch.' And Atticus drew out of his pocket a beautifully carved wooden box, which he opened to reveal a purple scale.

Editor's note: it is, of course, Jim in _Darths and Droids_ who explains his approach to role-playing games thus: 'The way I see it... a character sheet is like a box of chocolates... I mean, it's... You never know what you're gonna kill... so why stress over it? The Tao's principle is spontaneity. You know... um... We play dice with the universe. Chocolate dice!'

Since this comic is a parody of _Star Wars_ , and Twigleg had never watched _Star Wars_ (and probably hadn't played role-playing games, either), it is anybody's guess what he made of it. Judging by these diaries, however, he seems to have acquired information about the modern world remarkably quickly.


	21. Chapter 21

Tuesday 27th October 2015

We've spent most of the day chatting with Atticus. By 'we', I mean mostly my Master and I, sometimes Professor Greenbloom and Miss Guinevere, and a couple of times Liam. Professor Spotiswode said good morning to him politely, but then seemed to feel so uncomfortable with him that he went out on his own for most of the day, and didn't return to his van until well after dark. But Ivan just sulks, and occasionally tries to break things up between my Master and Atticus by calling out insults, or accusing Atticus of being in love with my Master, or the other way round. Once, Liam jokingly asked, 'Hey, why's it matter so much if Ben fancies Atti? Do _you_ fancy him, or summat?'

Ivan went beserk, hit Liam, knocked him down, and went on hitting him until Professor Greenbloom dragged him off. 'Don't you _dare_ call me a faggot!' Ivan snarled.

'He didn't call you anything like that!' said Meera indignantly.

'What does "faggot" mean?' my Master asked me.

I had been doing some research on British culture since arriving. 'It's a type of meatball made of minced pork liver,' I explained. 'Or it can mean a bundle of branches for firewood – or a bundle of anything else, like herbs or metal rods. And faggoting is a style of embroidery in which threads are fastened together.'

Miss Guinevere laughed. 'I don't think that's what Ivan meant, though. He lost his temper because Liam accused him of being gay. Ivan, I don't know whether you are or not, but…'

'What do you mean, _you don't know?_ ' roared Ivan.

'Well, I don't even know whether _I_ am or not, yet,' said Miss Guinevere. 'I don't fancy _anyone_ yet! We're _twelve_! I love Ben – I mean, he's a good friend, and if he wasn't my brother, maybe we'd have started fancying each other when we were older, but now that he _is_ my brother, it'd be horrible if we did. But right now, he's my friend, but if he _wasn't_ my brother, people would be accusing me of having a _boyfriend_ , and wanting to know if I thought he was _sexy_ , because nobody can believe that a boy and a girl can be just friends! And now, nobody seems to believe a boy and a boy can be just friends, or a boy and a vampire, or – anything!'

'Yeah, but if you _are_ gay, there's no point pretending you're not, is there?' retorted Liam. 'And I know I'm not, because I know Meera's my soul-mate,' he added, squeezing her hand.

Liam stormed off to spend the rest of the day with the dragons. My Master ran after him (with me clinging grimly to the shoulder of his jacket), calling to him to come back, but Ivan just snapped, 'Oh, go and kiss Dickless instead!'

'I probably ought to leave now,' Atticus said when we returned. 'I'm not going to be coming back to school after this half-term anyway. Ivan's right about one thing - I _should_ go back where I came from. Most of Ireland isn't as built-up as a lot of England, so it makes hunting easier.'

'You don't hunt – people, do you?' Miss Guinevere asked.

'No, never – my parents were very strict about that. If we even taste human blood once – say, giving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to someone who's got a cut lip – we can get addicted, and going "cold bat" – giving up human blood – is said to be the one vampire illness that feels worse than Turning. And I don't hunt fantastic beings like leprechauns and kelpies either – though I used to know vampires who got drunk on clurichauns, and said they tasted like a cocktail of two parts leprechaun to one part red wine. I used to think killing ordinary animals like foxes or rats was all right if it was for food – but I might have to change my mind about rats, now that I've met Lola,' he added hastily.

'Why do you need to kill at all?' asked Miss Guinevere.

'I'm a vampire. I can only live on blood. Believe me, bean soup and spinach juice don't work.'

'No, I meant why _kill_ them? I mean – how much blood do you need to drink?'

'A gallon per month is about the minimum I can survive on. That can be up to a dozen foxes or so per month.'

'And how much blood is there in a cow?' Miss Guinevere persisted.

Atticus considered. 'I don't know – I've never drunk anything bigger than a sheep. But I'd guess it would be about six gallons or so.'

'So, if you had a _dozen_ cows and drank four pints from two of them each month, they'd each get a six-month break before you needed to drink from them again, and they'd be fine,' Miss Guinevere pointed out. 'It's no different from milking, really – except that if you're just drinking their blood, you don't have to get them pregnant with a calf they won't be allowed to keep.'

Atticus's eyes widened. 'I can't believe I hadn't thought of that,' he said.

We discussed a report I had read about probiotic supplements that can be fed to cows to make them produce less methane, so that they're less environmentally damaging. Then we went back to chatting about fantasy fiction.

'Next time I take on a new identity, I might call myself Mordion,' said Atticus. 'Or maybe Severus. Which do you think?'

'Definitely Severus,' said Ivan, returning from the dragons' valley after realising that Slatebeard was asleep and that he didn't feel like talking to Kuriana because she was Atticus's friend. 'Because Severus Snape was a complete jerk, and so are you.'

'He was a brave man who risked his life to protect Harry, even though they couldn't stand each other,' said Atticus. 'He just wasn't cut out to be a teacher, that's all. But he's my favourite character in the Harry Potter books – though I've always had a soft spot for Remus Lupin, too. If you could be a Harry Potter character, who would you be, Twigleg?'

'I don't know,' I said. 'I haven't read them yet.'

'I think you'd be Hermione – the one who's _always_ read everything there is to know about whatever they're facing,' said Miss Guinevere. 'Ben would be Harry, obviously.'

'And you?' Atticus asked.

'I don't know,' Miss Guinevere said. 'I'd like to be Hagrid, and spend my life working with magical creatures.'

'I've just been reading a fanfic that ends up with Harry and Snape living on a remote island and breeding hippogriffs and cockatrices,' Atticus said.

'And you, Ivan?' my Master asked. 'If you were a Harry Potter character, who would you be?'

But Ivan had already stormed off to the tent.

Wednesday 28th October 2015

Atticus and Kuriana have disappeared. I saw them going off for a flight last night, and hoped Atticus wouldn't get too tired after being up most of the day, but there was no sign of them today. It was so dark – and I was so tired – that I didn't even notice that Atticus had packed his tent away before leaving.

Nobody knows where they've gone, or why. Slatebeard says Kuriana didn't mention anything to him about leaving, and he'd thought she meant to stay with him until Hothbrodd's plane arrived.

My Master blames Ivan for 'being horrible to Atticus' and driving him away. Professor Greenbloom says that Atticus is a grown vampire who's capable of making his own decisions, and that he's probably looking for a suitable place to start his farm, or at least learn something about farming. But that doesn't explain why he ran off so suddenly, without saying goodbye. Professor Greenbloom sounded as though he was trying to convince himself that everything was all right.

I think Atticus probably left because he was afraid of breaking up the friendship between my Master and Ivan. If so, it isn't working. Ivan has been in a foul mood all day, and refusing to talk to anyone. When Professor Greenbloom began a remark to him with 'my dear Ivan…' Ivan snapped, 'And you're a fag too, are you, _darling_ Professor?' and stormed off. I suppose most British men (or American men, for that matter) don't call people, 'my dear,' very often, but Germans do, and Professor Greenbloom talks that way to anyone – to me, or Professor Spotiswode, or Firedrake. Ivan would have known that Professor Greenbloom wasn't either trying to flirt with him or being patronising, if he'd thought about it.

(I'm not sure what humans mean by 'patronising'. Sometimes it just means being a customer who comes and spends money in, say, a shop or a restaurant, but otherwise, I'd have thought it meant something like 'behave like a father', and I can't see why that's a bad thing. Until this year, I hadn't found out what it was like to have people who are bigger than me who love me and want to protect me and help me, and it's wonderful. My Master doesn't seem to resent being loved that way by Professor Greenbloom and by Firedrake, either. But maybe it's different for Ivan.)

Professor Spotiswode has gone again, as well. Johan says he cooked dinner for the two of them last night (even now that Johan is human again, Professor Spotiswode still seems to think of him as a pet who needs to be fed), but he went out again. As his van is still parked here, I suppose he'll come back to it, though.

Most modern human forms of transport are so dangerous that to drive them, you have to have not only a licence to prove you know how to drive, but insurance in case you hurt someone or damage their vehicle and have to pay them compensation. I asked Johan what he was going to do about this problem if Professor Spotiswode didn't come back. Johan grinned and said, 'What problem?' and I saw that he was holding a driving licence (still in the name of 'Rudolf Faulwetter') and making himself look like Mr Faulwetter.

Professor Greenbloom said sharply, 'Johan!'

Johan shrugged, and let his blond, Faulwetter-hair turn brown and shoulder-length. 'Okay, okay, I won't!' he said. 'Well – not if Spotty comes back in the next couple of days, anyway. But if anything happens to him – well, it's what he'd've wanted, right? I mean, if I'm going to go off hunting Wights – I mean, _curing_ , okay, we're not going to hurt them, but I still need a way to get close to them – we need Faulwetter's cover identity, don't we?'


	22. Chapter 22

Thursday 29th October 2015

Last night, I was woken by the sound of dragon wingbeats overhead. I wondered whether Kuriana was returning, or whether Firedrake had been worrying about Slatebeard and decided to turn back. I shook my Master to try to wake him, but it was Ivan who got up, peeled off his sleeping-bag and stuffed it in his rucksack, strapped the pack on, and went running down to the wooded valley. I don't think he had slept at all – a human's hearing wouldn't be sharp enough to pick up the sound of dragon-wings in his sleep. Ivan had gone to bed fully dressed, with his shoes still on. Everything else he owned had already been neatly packed away in his rucksack, not strewn around the bottom of the tent the way it usually was.

'Master!' I shouted in his ear. 'I think Ivan's running away!'

My Master picked me up and ran, in pyjamas, after his friend. I could hear the frozen grass crunching under his bare feet, and several times he started at having trodden on thistles. Once he trod on a hedgehog. Maybe if he hadn't grabbed me, he'd have remembered to grab the torch instead. At least the moonlight was bright – it was full moon on Tuesday night, when Kuriana set off.

In the valley, we found Ivan hugging a blue dragon we hadn't met before, whose horns had only a simple curve like Firedrake's.

'Ivan!' my Master called. 'Is this your friend Issiah – the one who saved you from the bear?'

' _He's_ my friend,' said Ivan, in tones that implied that nobody else was.

'Hello, Issiah,' said my Master. 'Don't be afraid. I like dragons. Slatebeard can tell you…'

'Go _away_!' snapped Ivan. 'We don't _need_ people! We've got each other!'

'Earlier, I thought that I did not need people,' my Master said. 'Firedrake made me see that I did.'

I wasn't sure whether he meant that he hadn't thought he needed to live with humans until Firedrake persuaded him to return to Professor Greenbloom and his family, or that he hadn't realised he needed friends at all, until he met Firedrake. I didn't think I did, until I met the group.

(And I do mean the group, not just Ben. I hate to think that I took Sorrel as a role model – and she'd probably be equally horrified if she knew I thought of her that way – but when I saw the way she fussed over Firedrake like a mother, I started to wonder what it would be like to polish someone's scales because you love him, rather than because he would eat you if you didn't.)

'Don't you come near my human!' snapped Issiah.

'But – Ivan is my friend too…' my Master protested.

'Oh, yeah? Can you stop his dad hitting him, just for not being the golden boy his brother is? Driving him to run away into a forest full of grizzlies? Stopping him seeing his mama?'

'I thought your mum died!' my Master protested to Ivan. 'And you have never told me that your dad hit you.'

'And you never told _me_ how unhappy you were!' Issiah added. 'You touched my scale only when you felt happy, didn't you?'

'Well, yeah – I didn't want to worry you,' Ivan mumbled.

'And how often did you feel happy enough to touch it? Once a year? Less?'

'I touched it _this_ week when I wasn't feeling good,' Ivan protested.

'Yes. And that's why I've flown across the Atlantic to take you away from this. Come on, strap your bag on, and let's go.'

'Ivan, wait…' my Master pleaded.

'What d'you want?' retorted Ivan. 'A goodbye kiss? You're mixing me up with your dead buddy.'

'But – we are friends, or?' said my Master.

'Humans are never friends!' snapped Issiah. 'The only time humans get together is to gang up on someone else!'

'That's not true!' I shouted. 'I've met some of the worst humans, but I've also met some of the best, and they more than make up for the bad ones!'

'So? You're just a miniature human yourself!' retorted Issiah. 'Get out, or I'll flame you!'

My Master laughed. 'Dragonfire does not…' he began, and then stopped, remembering that, even if it didn't harm him, it _would_ harm me. But he had hesitated for too long. As he began to retreat painfully over the cold, uneven ground, Issiah had already lowered his head and built up a stream of fire, and now he was too late to stop himself from shooting it at us. Suddenly Slatebeard (who had said nothing, and been so still that I thought he was asleep) lumbered between us, and Issiah's fire caught him on his flank and his wing. There was a terrible smell of scorching, and Slatebeard roared with agony.

'Sorry, Granddad,' said Issiah. 'I didn't mean _you_ any harm.'

'This boy,' said Slatebeard indignantly, 'is the Dragon-rider. He helped my entire colony escape to the Rim of Heaven and defeat a villain who had been hunting dragons for centuries. And you tried to flame him just because he's human?'

'I don't hate all humans,' said Issiah. 'Just humans who get between me and Ivan.'

'But you don't hate Slatebeard, anyway,' my Master pointed out. 'Can you heal him? Please?'

'No, I can't,' said Issiah. 'My species don't have _healing powers_. We're not like unicorns or caladrius-birds or…'

'Silver dragons?' my Master suggested.

'Exactly!' said Issiah. 'So _your_ lot won't want me around, will they?' he added to Slatebeard. His words sounded bitter, but underneath he sounded as if he was longing to be accepted.

'I'm – glad to know there are – other dragons, and – of course different species have – different powers,' gasped Slatebeard, but sounding weaker than ever with pain.

'Slatebeard? Can you heal yourself?' my Master asked.

'I – haven't the fire…' gasped Slatebeard.

'Professor Greenbloom will know what to do,' said my Master. 'We've got to go and find him!'

Firedrake would have offered us a ride up out of the valley, but Issiah left it to my Master to climb back up. It was a long, slow climb through the dark woods up the side of the valley, but as we were halfway up, we saw something flying above us. Two somethings, in fact. One looked like a small, human-sized silver dragon, which kept puffing out little jets of blue flame for no obvious reason except to look at them. The other, which I could make out when the puffs of flame illuminated it, was Lola's aeroplane. The little dragon landed on its hind paws, and blew a jet of healing blue flame, the opposite of Issiah's scorching orange flame, over Slatebeard's wounds. It left clear, apparently undamaged scales and wing-membranes, which actually looked healthier than the tarnished scales on the rest of Slatebeard's body.

'I'm very grateful for your help, laddie,' said Slatebeard, nuzzling the smaller dragon. 'You've almost certainly saved my life. But where did you come from? Are your parents around?'

'I suppose we don't need to hurry to fetch Professor Greenbloom now,' I said.

'Of course not!' said Lola, who had landed and stepped out of her plane. 'What would he have been able to do? Stick a plaster over the burnt bits? It was obvious that what you needed was a silver dragon. And as we hadn't got one – well, the scape-snifter was the next best thing.'

'And being a dragon is _awesome!_ ' added Johan, starting to morph into human form (and then morphing back into dragon as it occurred to him that he didn't have any clothes on, and that being a naked human on a cold October night could be uncomfortable and bad for the health as well as embarrassing.

'Uh – I don't want to be greedy,' I said. 'But – it looks as though you've made Slatebeard _better_ , not just healed his injury. So – if you could breathe fire all over him, do you think you could restore his health?'

'It's got to be worth a try!' said Johan eagerly. He blew flames as far as he could reach around Slatebeard's body, and then Issiah lifted the shapeshifter up on his head to reach the rest (while Issiah managed to keep himself from blowing his scorching flames).

When they had finished, Slatebeard tried to stretch out his wings, and just about managed it (though they trembled), but he certainly wasn't able to fly, and after a few minutes he folded his wings, exhausted. 'I think I need to sleep after that,' he said, even though the moon was still bright overhead. 'But, noble shape-shifter, I'm truly grateful for your help. And, Issiah, I'll be getting a lift to a safe refuge in a day or two anyway. Would you mind staying to keep me company until then?'

'The guy who nearly maimed you? Why would you want that?' jeered Issiah.

'Because I'd like to have the chance to get to know you better,' said Slatebeard. 'Of course, I understand if you want to set off while it's still close to full moon. Do you have any family back home?'

'Nah – well, if I have, I never met them. They left my egg in Mount Hood volcano, Oregon, and I hatched when it erupted, oh, a couple of hundred years ago. For all I know, I'd been lying there for centuries waiting for an eruption, and my folks could've been dead by the time I hatched. Why do you care, anyway?'

'Well, if you didn't want to live in Norway with an old buffer like me, the intrepid Lola could certainly lead you to the Rim of Heaven and give you a chance to meet other dragons – the Scottish ones who fled from here, and the Himalayan ones who come from those parts. I just don't like to think of a young dragon like you being alone in the world,' Slatebeard said.

'I won't be alone. I've got Ivan. He's all I need, and I'm all he needs. Okay?' snarled Issiah.

'Definitely!' said Ivan. 'C'mon, let's get going. It'll be morning soon if we hang around saying goodbye any longer.'

So they set off, without letting any of us dissuade them. When we told Professor Greenbloom that Ivan had met his dragon friend Issiah and flown off on him, he didn't say anything for a long time. I expect he was thinking how he would feel if my Master or Miss Guinevere ran away. At last he said, 'What impression did you get of Issiah as a person? Do you think he'll be able to look after Ivan?'

'He – cares about Ivan,' said my Master, trying to be positive. 'They love each other a lot. And – Issiah said that Ivan's father hits him. Issiah wants to take Ivan away, to keep him safe.'

'He burned Slatebeard's wing!' I shouted.

'That was an accident,' my Master protested.

'Yes – an accident because Slatebeard got in the way when Issiah was trying to burn _us!_ ' I reminded him. 'If Johan hadn't healed him, Slatebeard said he could be dead by now! Issiah is nothing like Firedrake and the other dragons, believe me!' After all, as Hiccup himself – as much of a dragon-lover as anyone could hope to meet – had written, unfortunately some dragons really _are_ monsters. I realised how lucky I had been in the ones I had met up until now. 'Though Issiah _did_ let Johan sit on his head to treat the upper half of Slatebeard's body,' I admitted.

'The upper half? How bad _was_ this burn?'

'No, that was just because we thought, if Johan in silver-dragon-form could heal wounds, maybe he could restore Slatebeard's youth while he was at it,' I explained. 'After all, he can alter his own body to stay young. But it didn't work.'

'I'm afraid not,' said Professor Greenbloom. 'Not many creatures can renew their youth, apart from phoenixes. But considering Slatebeard was born when hunting dragons was still legal, he might be one of the few from his generation to die of old age. Is he all right now?'

'Yes, he's fine,' I said. 'He's just very tired from rushing in front of us to protect us from Issiah.'

Professor Greenbloom nodded, relieved, and then stood lost in thought again. Eventually he said, 'How on earth am I going to explain this to James Marrs? He trusted me to look after Ivan, and now…'

'It's not your debt!' said my Master. 'Anyway, Ivan's dad used to hit him!'

'Did Ivan tell you that was true, or do you only have Issiah's word for it?' Professor Greenbloom asked. We were silent, and the Professor went on, 'And "hitting him" could mean anything from regularly thrashing him hard enough to leave bruises or worse, to having once slapped him, and being sorry, and never doing it again. We don't know – but we ought to find out. If Ivan's father is abusive, then Josh and Joseph are in danger, too. And that means we need to talk to Ivan, which isn't easy if he's flown off.'

'He'll have his handy – his cellphone – his mobile,' said my Master, picking over words until he found the appropriate British one. 'I'll call him, and send a text if he doesn't answer.'

As it turned out, it isn't easy to get reception here – not because dragons interfere with radio reception the way trolls do, but just because we're so far from a mobile phone mast. You have to stand in just the right spot of the campsite with the phone number you want already keyed in (or the friend's name you want already highlighted in the dictionary to bring up his number) and then wait until the phone shows one or two bars of reception and press the green button, at which point the reception fades away. My Master managed to send text messages to Ivan, to Atticus, and to Professor Spotiswode, asking where they were and whether they were all right. Professor Greenbloom drove around the nearby villages (with my Master and me in his car) trying to find a phone-box, which is a sort of building the size of one human which contains an old-fashioned kind of phone called a 'landline' which doesn't need mobile phone reception. Or at least, it used to contain a phone. Most of the red phone boxes we saw contained either a collection of second-hand books for people to help themselves to, or a display of plants taking advantage of the light through the glass windows and shelter from the wind.

Eventually, Professor Greenbloom managed to find one with a working phone, and rang Dr Marrs to tell him that his son had run away with a dragon, no, not Slatebeard, nor Kuriana, but a blue dragon whom he'd met in America a few years earlier. No, this wasn't a joke… after a pause, Professor Greenbloom continued, 'My dear Marrs, I think you're in shock. Do you think you'd better take the day off work?'

After a few minutes, he gave up and rung off. 'What did Ivan's dad say?' my Master asked.

'He laughed, rather hysterically, I think,' said Professor Greenbloom. 'I don't think he's quite ready to cope with the news. We ought to drive back to Manchester and be with him.'

'But what about Slatebeard?' my Master asked. 'We can't just leave him!'

'Hothbrodd will be coming to pick him up in a day or so anyway, and Lola can show him where Slatebeard is if he has any trouble finding the valley. Besides, Slatebeard might be safer if we can be back in England and distract Dr Marrs from coming up here again. I've got a horrible feeling that I made a mistake in letting him know there were dragons here. I thought…' Professor Greenbloom buried his head in his hands, 'I thought the problem was that so few people believed dragons and brownies and so on existed – and even when they catch a brownie or a homunculus, they try to convince themselves that what they've really found is either an ordinary animal or some kind of elaborate toy. I just couldn't imagine that anyone who had met a dragon would want to lock him up and experiment on him. But Spotiswode told me that was what Marrs wanted to do.'

So we've come home – 'we' being the humans and me. There wasn't room for everyone in one car, so Johan drove Liam and Meera in his van. He's now disguised as 'Rudolf Faulwetter', so that the driving licence and insurance are in the right name, and he says that if Professor Spotiswode doesn't get in touch with him, he might take on Faulwetter's identity permanently. If Professor Spotiswode does reappear, he's going to claim that they were twin brothers who were separated at birth and adopted by different families and therefore have different names.

Lola and Mouse are staying until Hothbrodd comes to collect Slatebeard. After that, they're planning to go back to the Welsh island where Mouse was made, and see whether they can find the other clay men.

I don't know where Pete and Miranda are. I thought I saw a black shape flying over us, but it might have been just an ordinary bird. Anyway, they know now that they can go wherever they want.


	23. Chapter 23

Friday 30th October 2015

We had a text message from Atticus this morning: 'Poppy I left in stag a hussy – I'm find, thanks. Lands Spotiswode found tired orphaned vampire children, Lucy, Jason, and Sofi, and thought I night know of someone who night want to adopt then. I paid I'll take then – so mow we're in Ireland, looking for somewhere to kite.'

My Master stared at the message, baffled, then showed it to me. 'Atticus says he's fine, and he's sorry he left in such a hurry,' I translated. 'He and Professor Spotiswode found three orphaned vampire children and Atticus decided to adopt them, so now they're in Ireland, looking for somewhere to live.'

My Master scrolled down the screen, revealing more of the message. 'Lands is staying with of, as Lucy, the oldest agile, is Turning at the moment and offer a jot of case. Pie is serving in bee in the hovel where we hate cooled snoop for the newt two weeks. Oust in mow, loud, Atticus.'

'They've booked rooms in a hotel – at least, I _hope_ that's what it means – for the next two weeks,' I explained. 'Lucy, the oldest child, is Turning into a vampire – you remember what Atticus said about how awful that feels – and needs a lot of care, so she's resting in bed, and Professor Spotiswode is staying to help Atticus look after her. He must go now, so he sends his love.'

'Do vampires interfere with reception?' my Master asked. 'Lola said that trolls do.'

'No, I think he was just in a hussy – a hurry – again, and didn't have time to check the predictive text,' I said.

While we were away, Professora Greenbloom had seen an advert on the internet for a second-hand boy's bike the right size for my Master. Most of the things the Greenblooms have are second-hand, partly because they don't have much money to spare but mainly because they want to avoid the wastefulness of new goods being manufactured while usable ones are being thrown away. So, after breakfast today, Professor Greenbloom took my Master to decide whether he liked the bike or not. He did, so they brought it home, and, after lunch, my Master and Miss Guinevere went out for a bike ride with Liam and Meera.

Johan has asked if he can stay with us. Apparently Faulwetter didn't have a house in this country. After losing his job as a teacher, he had sold his flat, bought a van (with a section that he could lock Johan-the-Hollow into), and used the remainder of his money on living expenses as he travelled around in search of Peculiars. Johan slept in the van last night, but it's growing chilly, and he'd like to be somewhere warmer. So he's moved into the basement for the time being, with the van parked outside, and my Master and I are sharing with Miss Guinevere and the brownies again (and fairies who insist on the window being open so that they can fly in and out). I'm used to cold, but the humans and brownies are grumbling about it.

Saturday 31st October

I was woken early this morning by Blue squabbling with Robbie. 'Oi! Give me my jeans back!'

'Oh, yeah?' sniggered Robbie. 'Or what'll you do? _Scratch_ me?'

'Rob!' said Billy, angrily. 'That's out of order! Hiding clothes is one thing, but taking the mickey out of Blue's paws isn't funny. If you make another crack about them, I'll bite one of _your_ claws off – just one, mind – and see how funny _you_ find it!'

I had noticed before that Blue seemed to keep his claws retracted, like a cat. But now I wondered whether he was a clawless species of brownie, like African clawless otters.

'Yeah, well, it's his own fault!' retorted Robbie. 'He shouldn't've sold himself to a wizard who was going to do that to him.'

'Done what?' asked Hob. 'Did you ask to have your claws magicked away so you could wear clothes without snagging on the threads?'

'No!' snapped Blue, who was hunched into a ball of misery. When Billy tried to put a comforting paw around his shoulders, Blue only hissed at him and hunched up even further.

By now, I wasn't the only one awake. My Master and Miss Guinevere had woken, too, and Professor Greenbloom had come in to see what was wrong.

'I'd always wondered why you wore clothes, Blue,' said Miss Guinevere. 'Most brownies I've met don't like wearing them, unless it's really cold.'

'No,' said Blue bitterly. 'But then, most brownies have never been anything other than free.'

'You were a slave originally?' I asked. 'Like me?'

'Oh, yes, I've heard the way you keep calling Ben, " _Master_ "!' sneered Blue. 'But you've _got_ clothes. You _could_ leave, if you wanted.'

'But I _don't_ want to!' I retorted. 'I _chose_ Ben to be my Master, because it was the only way I could break my bond to my old Master.'

'Do you still think of me like that?' said my Master, sounding disappointed. 'I thought we were friends?'

'We _are!_ ' I assured him. 'It's just that – you're my friend who is also my Master, just as Professor Greenbloom is your friend who is also your father. I was created to serve _someone_ – that's how it is, for homunculi.'

'Well it isn't, for brownies!' said Blue. 'We may have the motto, "Lend a paw," but we expect to get it back with all the digits intact.'

'So, what did happen?' Hob asked again.

'I used to live in the forest,' Blue began. 'It was cold and wet and there wasn't a lot of milk and cream and butter and cheese to be had, so I made a home for myself in a barn, until the farmer decided someone was "stealing" his cows' milk – which was ridiculous, I might add! If he couldn't be bothered to milk them more than twice a day, it was hardly my fault if the cows started feeling a bit over-full in the middle of the night and were grateful to me for making them a bit more comfortable, and if he didn't like not getting as much milk in the morning, he should have got up earlier!

'But, anyway, the farmer asked a wizard to set a spell to catch whoever or whatever was milking his cows, and when the wizard came and found me immobilised, he offered me a job as his familiar. He made it sound lovely – a warm bed in his tower, a bowl of creamy milk twice a day, and in return he just wanted a little help with his spells now and then.

'So I moved in with the wizard, and he gave me a contract to sign. I couldn't read or write human language, but I was only a kitten and didn't know any better. So I spat on my paw, made a salivary pawprint on the contract, and sprinkled it with combings from my fur to make my mark.

'Well, I soon discovered I'd made a mistake. The wizard didn't just want magical assistance – maybe some spit here or some fur there as ingredients for his potions. He wanted me to do all the housework, like cleaning his robes. I thought it looked a disgusting job, but I set to work anyway, and the wizard threw a hissy fit and said no, no, not _licking_ them, I was supposed to heat up a cauldron of water, pour it into the sink and mix it with soap powder, and scrub! I'd never heard anything so disgusting – getting my paws wet, as if I was a klabautermann, or one of those water-kobolds who smell like wet dogs!

'To make it worse, when I tried to go out, I found that I couldn't even leave the wizard's tower without his permission! He didn't mind sending me on errands – "Blue, hang the washing out in the garden," – "Blue, I need scarlet elfcup and wood anemones from the forest," – but left to myself, I couldn't so much as go out to the privy! All right, he'd got a chamber-pot under his bed, but I certainly didn't fancy sharing it with him, so even if I was desperate, I just had to keep my paws crossed until morning came so that I could ask to be let out. I was worse off than those poor cows, now!

'Still, I stuck it out for a few weeks, being a faithful servant and not doing anything stupid like trying to make the furniture come to life to do my chores for me. But then I pointed out to the wizard that he _had_ hired me as a familiar, not just a skivvy, and did he need help with anything magical? And then, of course, I wished I hadn't, because he did things like making me sit in a pentagram and summoning demons to speak through me, and their voices tasted worse than furballs.

'After a while, he got a human servant, and gave him a contract to sign, too. But this time, he didn't tell the boy to sign with spit and hair-clippings – oh, no! He gave the boy a quill with no ink, and told him to write at the bottom of the contract, 'I am a slave.' When the boy started writing, the words appeared in blood on the parchment as the shape of the words opened up as a wound on the back of his right hand, but as soon as he'd finished, the wound closed up, and the marks written in his blood vanished. So the wizard told him to do it again, until they stayed on the page. So he had to go on, writing it over and over, feeling the pain of being cut again and again. I could see he didn't want to do it, but he was very thin and hungry and desperate for food and shelter, just the way I had been.

'I was angry – angrier about that than I had been at anything the wizard had done to me – and I lashed out and scratched the wizard. So he cast a spell to immobilise me and the boy, and then made the boy watch while he pulled out every single one of my claws. When he'd finished, he said to me, "Now you'll grind them up. I need powdered brownie claws for my potions," and to the boy, "Make that, 'I am a slave and I will suffer if I disobey.' Go on writing it until it sticks."

'So I hobbled away to fetch the pestle and mortar, and the boy went on writing until the words stayed on the page and the wounds stayed open on his hand. It was past midnight when the wizard was finally satisfied and let us go. I licked the boy's wounds and my own, and the boy bandaged both of us, and we curled up to sleep together.

'In the morning, the wizard wasn't going to let us rest just because we were injured. He did lend the boy a leather glove to put over his bandaged hand while he scrubbed out a cauldron, but wouldn't let me have any protection to keep my bandages dry while I walked in the dewy grass to gather herbs before dawn, or while I washed up the porridge bowls after breakfast. When the boy – Simon, that was his name – asked whether I could borrow some gloves and boots too, the wizard was furious with him, and shouted "Clothes are for humans, you ninny! What do you think a brownie would look like, going around in clothes?" He boxed Simon's ears, but then he calmed down a bit and announced that he was going out for the day and wouldn't be back till midnight, and he gave us a list of jobs to get on with while he was gone. "Simon, I know _you_ won't disobey me," he said. "You get on with your tasks, and see that the brownie gets on with his."

'When the wizard was gone, I asked Simon how the wizard knew he wouldn't disobey. "Because I can't," he said. "It's in my slave-bond. I'm an orphan and I couldn't find any other work, so I had a choice of signing myself over to the wizard or starving. I thought he was going to sign me up for an apprenticeship until I was eighteen, but when he made me sign with a blood-quill, I realised I was going to be his slave for life, unless I fulfil some get-out clause…"

'He must have seen me wince at those words, but he explained that it just meant that, if something that was stated in the contract happened, he would be free. He didn't know what the contract said, because it was written in some ancient language he'd never seen before. I thought he was pretty stupid to have signed a contract he hadn't read, but then, I'd done exactly the same myself, so I wasn't in a position to criticise.

'Simon offered to find my contract, in case the wizard had written that in plain language, knowing I still wouldn't be able to read it. He tried to break into the desk in the wizard's study, but as soon as he did so, his sore hand – which he had said wasn't too painful earlier – gave him a burst of agony which made him so ill that he could barely stand. I made him lie down until he'd recovered, and then he got on with his work, until a bit later on, when I had to scrub the floor, and Simon went to try and steal some long leather gloves to protect my paws. This time, he not only nearly fainted with pain, but the bandage on his hand was suddenly soaked with fresh blood. I lifted his hand above his head until the bleeding had stopped, and then went and fetched fresh bandages for it. We realised that this must be what "I will suffer if I disobey," meant: that the spell carved into Simon's hand would punish him instantly.

'He was very apologetic at not being able to help me, but I hugged him and reassured him that I was thankful to him just for trying, and after that, the pain in his hand seemed to ease. As the day went on, we found that Simon's hand didn't punish him again – not even when he broke into the potions cellar to make a salve for my paws, and then insisted that I rest while he did my work for me. In fact, when the wizard came home and peeled off the bandages to inspect Simon's hand, he found the wounds completely healed, leaving only pale scars that looked as if they had been carved years ago. He smiled, and said, "Good – you've learnt faster than I expected."

'After that, the wizard left us unattended more and more, sometimes for days at a time. Simon's hand didn't hurt him again when he went against his instructions to make my life a bit easier, so we concluded that it wasn't triggered to punish him for _all_ disobedience: only for trying to look in the wizard's desk drawer, or for trying to steal gloves for me to wear. And once my paws had healed and I didn't need to worry about keeping the wounds dry, I wasn't so worried about that anyway.

'I got used to coping without claws, and Simon showed me how to make tools out of sharpened bits of wood or metal to use instead. And one day, when I was sure the wizard was out, I took one of the twisted bits of metal I'd made, and had a go at picking the lock on the wizard's desk myself, since Simon didn't dare try it again. A piece of parchment fell out, and when I picked it up, I saw that it was Simon's contract, not mine – and it was written in a language that I could read. The wizard had chosen an old language called Draconic, though in truth, probably more brownies and other kobolds than dragons are able to read it. Simon's contract said that he would be compelled to obedience _until he could win the gratitude of a brownie_. The wizard had obviously either assumed that I was such a selfish little beast that I would never feel grateful to Simon, or that Simon would never do anything to deserve my gratitude. I can only assume the wizard was judging us by himself.

'At that point, I heard the wizard coming home, so I had to hurry to put everything back, lock the desk again, and be back to dissecting newts before he suspected anything. But I told Simon that his contract had been broken, and that he could leave any time he wanted. He looked tempted, but he refused to go until I was free, too. Besides, winter was coming on, and it didn't seem like a good time for running away, so we decided that we'd wait until spring, and we would wait for another opportunity to break into the wizard's desk and see if we could find my contract.

'I think the wizard was growing suspicious, of me if not of Simon, because he used a charm to lock his whole office by magic, so that we couldn't even get near the desk. But then one day, early in the morning before the sun was up, Simon came and shook me awake. "Happy Christmas, Blue," he said. "Here's your Christmas present." And he gave me the wizard's warm winter coat and boots. "Shall we go for a walk?" he asked.

'"You know I can't go out without permission," I said, but Simon just smiled.

'"Right, and the wizard knows I can't steal from him," he said. "Let's go."

'So we crept downstairs (I didn't make the mistake of actually putting the boots on until we were standing at the front door), and I lifted the latch as easily as if I were a free brownie, and stepped out.

'Outside, it was filthy weather – not pretty Christmas-card snow, but alternately raining, sleeting, and hailing. When the wizard noticed we were gone, he wasn't going to be in a hurry to chase after us, especially now that he didn't have a coat or boots.

'We hurried on all day, and when we found a church where we could shelter for the night, as nobody could be dragged from a church, I asked Simon how he'd known that clothes could break the spell.

'"I should've worked it out ages ago," he said. "I should've wondered why the wizard was so angry when I asked him to lend you some gloves before. He bound you to be his slave until someone gave you clothes and you accepted them, because normally no brownie would think of wearing clothes, even if they were offered them."

'We travelled around for a while after that, until I went back to living in the forest, and Simon moved to another country where he hoped people wouldn't be able to read the scars on his hand. But since that day, I've always worn clothes, to remind myself that I'm a free brownie. And I understood then why kobolds of all kinds, if they live in a place where there are humans, are careful to bind themselves to the place rather than the people: house-brownies belong to houses, nisses to farms, tommy-knockers to mines, klaubautermänner to ships, and so on. And that's why we make it a rule to do humans one good turn per day, no more. The ones who live with dragons are happy to be loyal to their dragons and go where the dragons go, because dragons are willing to treat us as friends, not slaves. But then, some say we're related to dragons, if you go back far enough.'

I smiled at this. Practically all creatures seem to be related to dragons, or at least believe that they are.

'Yes,' said Professor Greenbloom thoughtfully. 'The nisses on my grandparents' farm were happy enough living in the barn, but they wouldn't go near the house, or let my grandparents catch sight of them.'

'What do nisses look like?' Blue asked.

'Oh, much smaller than you – like little old men with white beards,' Professor Greenbloom said. 'Both sexes grow beards, just as dwarves do, but the women tend to groom theirs rather more carefully. And they generally wear green tunics and red pointed hats.'

'So some kobold species wear clothes as a matter of course?' Blue asked.

'Some, yes – the nisses, and the silkies who wear grey silk dresses. And most leprechauns prefer wearing red jackets and white breeches – the only time when they wear green is when they're trying to catch British or American tourists.'

'You know a lot about kobolds,' said Blue. 'Hardly any humans believe in us these days. It took quite a while to find a place where people were willing to feed me. And you and your family are the first humans since Simon that I've actually wanted to be friends with.'

'You know,' Billy said thoughtfully, 'kobolds belong to a place, not a person. But they can change the place they belong to, if it doesn't produce food – just as miners can leave a worked-out mine. So, if you ever did decide to move to somewhere else, and the people who buy this house won't feed us, we might choose to belong to a new house. And if it happened to be the one that you'd moved into – well, that would be a not unwelcome coincidence.'


	24. Chapter 24

Wednesday 4th November

[Editor's note – this entry is written in Draconic, with no English translation]

I haven't written in my diary for a few days because I've been feeling too ill, and knowing that my problem was entirely self-inflicted and all in my mind just made it more embarrassing.

After writing that last entry on Saturday, I couldn't stop thinking about the horrific experiences Blue and Simon had been through, to the point where I found it hard to concentrate on anything else. While I was writing, everyone else had found something to do – Professora Greenbloom was on the phone to Lola, trying to have a conversation far enough from Hothbrodd for the phone not to cut out, but the gist of it seemed to be that Slatebeard had arrived safely on Friday morning and that, as there weren't any really suitable dragon-sized caves in the area, Hothbrodd and his friends were building a shelter for him. On another mobile phone, Johan was talking to Professor Spotiswode about when he might be coming back to England, and what they were going to do then. Professor Greenbloom had gone over to see Ivan's family, taking my Master and Miss Guinevere with him, to try to support them while they waited to see whether there was any news of Ivan.

I spent the day lost in my own thoughts. Was it true that Ivan was running away because his father beat him? And if so, was hitting children even unusual? I got the impression from books I'd read that until recently, it was normal for parents and teachers to beat children on their bottoms, with sticks or belts or whatever would hurt the most, until they were so sore that it hurt to sit down. Atticus said that when he'd been a boy and disobeyed his parents by going to church, the only reason his father _hadn't_ beaten him, when a normal human father presumably would have, was that if he drew blood, he might find the smell of it too enticing. I'd never seen Professor or Professora Greenbloom, or the teachers at the school, hit any child, but did that mean they never did?

If so, I thought, where did that leave me? Ben was my Master, so that gave him the right to punish me – and just because he had never done it so far didn't prove that he never would. But on the other hand, while he was suspended from school and I was helping him with homework, that made me his teacher, so did that mean _I_ was supposed to punish _him_ if he didn't do well enough? Probably not, I thought. It was the natural order of things for humans to be cruel to brownies and homunculi, like the alchemist who had welcomed me into the world by branding me, and the wizard Blue had told me about, and Enoch, the horrible boy who created Mouse. (I was feeling paranoid enough to ignore the fact that Ben had always been kind and gentle with me, and that Blue's friend Simon had risked agonising pain himself to help Blue.)

I was so absorbed in all this that I hardly even paid attention when Professor Greenbloom came home reporting that Dr Marrs and his remaining children seemed to have gone out. My Master and Miss Guinevere had gone out on their bikes to see Liam again, to make the most of the remainder of the holiday. I said I was feeling tired, and asked to be carried upstairs, to curl up on my pullover-nest on the bedside table by the bottom bunk which is my Master's bed for the time being. Blue was already up there, sitting at the desk playing a computer game. He's good with his paws, nearly as nimble as a human. I didn't even want to _think_ about Blue's paws. I pulled a fold of woollen cloth over my eyes and ears and nose, to block out as much sensory input as I could without suffocating, and fell asleep.

I had horrible dreams. First I dreamed that I was a powerful wizard, and bigger than an adult human, and that I was taking revenge on Sorrel for bullying me when _she_ was bigger. First I was going to pull her claws out so that she couldn't scratch me, and her teeth so that she couldn't bite me. After all, as I taunted her in my dream, it wasn't as if she needed sharp teeth for eating mushrooms, and as for times when there weren't any soft mushrooms to be had and she needed to eat hard roots or chewy leaves – well, she'd just have to get used to living on soup, that was all! In any case, I pointed out, she wouldn't be able to taste the difference, as I was going to cut out her tongue to pay her back for all her unkind words…

At this point I was so shocked at myself, even in the dream, that I shifted perspective, and now _I_ was the brownie having my claws torn out by the cruel wizard. It was just like humans to behave like that, I thought. Like that vicious Enoch, for example. If the lady who ran the orphanage had only taught him a lesson…

And now I was Miss Peregrine, the head of the orphanage where Mouse had been created, lecturing the grubby, clay-streaked urchin that was Enoch. 'As if bringing clay people to life without giving them skin to protect them wasn't bad enough, you persist in torturing them further by ripping their arms and legs off and throwing them to their companions to be torn apart!'

'Only the cowards who won't fight,' said Enoch defensively. 'Or when I'm doing an experiment, like. I've got a batch now wiv extra arms an' legs that I pulled off the deserters. What's it to you, anyway?'

'And I suppose you imagine that being in a position of power over people gives you the right to torment and kill them?' I asked.

'Yeah, I do,' retorted Enoch. 'They wouldn't be alive at all wivout me, so it's all my gift to them, innit?'

'And how old are you, Enoch?'

'A hunnerd an' seventeen – naw, wait, it's a hunnerd an' eighteen now, innit?' replied Enoch.

'And you would be highly unlikely to be still alive if I wasn't maintaining your youth within this time loop,' I replied. 'It seems I have the right to do whatever I want to you. Would you bring me my cane, please?'

Enoch gulped, but he hurried off and came back a minute later with a bamboo cane with the words 'Attitude adjuster' painted along one side. He bent over without another word, and I swung the cane twice at the seat of his overalls – except that by now my perspective in the dream was shifting and I half _was_ Enoch and could feel the stinging pain. But at the same time, I was _enjoying_ the whole experience, and I didn't even know if the person enjoying it was me-as-Miss-Peregrine enjoying causing pain, or me-as-Enoch enjoying suffering it.

Then the cane snapped in two. I (as Miss Peregrine) asked Enoch, 'Are you sorry for what you did?'

'Nah,' he retorted. 'An' a hidin' won't make no difference to that.'

'We shall see,' I said. 'Here is sixpence. You will walk into the village and buy – _buy_ , not _steal_ , and I shall expect to see a receipt and my change – a cane from the shop. You will bring it back and we'll finish the job. Do you understand?'

I (as Enoch) understood all too well. She could just as easily have sent me to cut a branch from any tree, but by sending me into the village, she could prolong the suspense, humiliate me in front of the villagers, and make me hand over money that could have been spent on a treat. (I know the real Miss Peregrine wasn't at all like this – from what Mouse told me, she seems to have been doing everything she could to make her charges' lives as happy as possible – but this was how she appeared in my dream.)

Enoch nodded stoically and took the money. But as he began to limp towards the village, I saw that there was blood soaking through his overalls, which seemed surprising. 'Wait, Enoch,' I called. 'Take down your trousers. I wish to inspect the damage.'

As the boy unfastened the straps of his overalls, peeled them off, and pulled down his underpants, I could see that his buttocks and thighs were marked with welts and bruises from numerous beatings from different implements, from sticks to belt-buckles, and that my lashes had broken through a scab and started it bleeding again. And, as Enoch, biting my cheeks and refusing to cry, I knew that I had been the same age and living the same day of my life for over a hundred years, living in another time loop before I came to this one, and that in the old loop I'd had _lots_ of beatings, just for doing normal things like bringing corpses back to life or playing with my clay soldiers, and that, as time didn't pass, my bruises never had time to heal, so they just accumulated one on top of another.

At the same time, I as Twigleg could see that, just as Enoch's body wasn't allowed to grow any older, his mind wasn't able to mature, so that he would never come to understand why it was wrong to torment the people he created. But, as Enoch, I only knew that I didn't care if being beaten was the price I had to pay for doing my experiments. The Hollows were out there, and so were the Nazis, and I needed to learn how to train my clay soldiers better and create them bigger and stronger, with more arms, so that they could defend me. The sooner I went to the shop and bought another cane so we could get the thrashing over with, the sooner I could get back to my research…

I was feeling sick from this dream when I woke up. It was evening by now, and my Master was there. 'Are you all right?' he asked. 'Barnabas says you've been sleeping all afternoon. Do you want to come and read with me for a bit?'

'Yes, Master, anything you say,' I said hurriedly, trying to stand up, and wincing. My feet felt so painful that I fell back, and winced a bit more.

'Twigleg, it was a suggestion, not an order!' my Master said hurriedly. 'You're not looking well at all. Do you want to rest for a while? I can bring you up some supper, if you don't feel up to coming down.'

I _did_ want to rest, but it wasn't easy. If I sat up, it hurt, because it reminded me of the dream about canes. If I lay back, it hurt, because it reminded me of being branded. And if I tried to use my hands or feet, it hurt, because it reminded me of what had been done to Blue and to Simon. I knew that the pain was only in my memory or my imagination, not in my physical body, but that didn't make it any easier to ignore. When my Master brought up a thimble of milk for me, I could barely sit still for long enough to drink it, and my hands shook so much that I couldn't even hold the thimble, so that he had to hold it to my lips to enable me to drink.

By now, he was seriously worried, and we decided to let Professora Greenbloom examine me. By now, I had to ask Bryony to help me undo the fastenings on my clothes, as my hands felt useless and the buttons and bootlaces and the knot of my tie were too fiddly for a human. I explained (without going into details) that I had had a nightmare that left me feeling sore and uncomfortable. The Professora confirmed that I didn't have a temperature, nor any sign of physical injury apart from whimpering with pain when anyone touched me. She asked whether anything would help, and I said I thought that having a cold bath in the washbasin, then being wrapped loosely in a handkerchief and put back to bed, might soothe my imaginary injuries. It did help a little – but the only position in which I could get even halfway comfortable was lying on my stomach, pillowed on a mound of knitted pullover, with my hands and feet dangling loose over the edges.

For the next few days, I drifted in and out of nightmares like these, in which I was sometimes abuser, sometimes victim, sometimes both simultaneously, and – what was most disturbing – somehow excited by the whole thing. Every cruelty I had ever experienced, witnessed, or heard about, came back to me, along with quite a lot that I'd invented for myself. Whenever I woke up, I felt disgusted with myself for having such a lurid imagination, ashamed of brooding on things that had happened centuries ago without doing more to protect the people who were being brutalised right now (it wasn't as if I'd done anything about helping Mouse rescue his fellow clay men, for example), and guilty about lying around being over-sensitive instead of getting up and doing something useful, like helping my Master with his language homework.

At the same time, I knew that I was too ill to be any use for anything practical at the moment. But if there was nothing physically wrong with me, I didn't have any _right_ to be ill. I remembered Sorrel remarking that it was only a matter of time before I cracked up completely. It seemed she was right, after all.

This (I thought in my more lucid moments) was the problem with starting to _feel_ things. From the time when my brothers were killed, I'd managed to survive by not letting myself feel anything at all, but then when I met Ben, I'd started to let feelings back into my life, and now they were coming in such a flood that they were in danger of drowning me. At least, when Bryony had been mauled by that owl and when Mouse had wanted me to sculpt his plasticine into features, I'd been able to clamp down on my squeamishness and do what I could for them, but now I couldn't even do that any more.

Last night (Tuesday), I let Bryony sprinkle some fairy dust over me, which at least allowed me to sleep peacefully, having pleasant, silly dreams whose details I forget. When I woke, it was late morning. I could hear my Master downstairs having a conversation with Johan, though I couldn't make out the words, and the only people in the bedroom were Bryony, Blue, and Billy. Bryony was practising aerobatics (her wing is perfectly healed by now, and you can only see the faint scar if you're very close and she's keeping still for once), and Blue was lying on a rug, bare to the waist, while Billy gently combed his claws through Blue's fur, making Blue purr contentedly. When they had finished, Billy slipped out of the room, and Blue padded over to sit on the bed next to me.

'How are you feeling?' he asked.

'Much better, thanks,' I said with a yawn. 'And hungry.'

'That's always a good sign,' said Blue.

'I'm sorry about the last few days,' I said. 'I'm ashamed of the way I've been behaving.'

'Really?' said Blue. 'Do you think _I_ need to feel ashamed of having no claws?'

'You don't lie around feeling sorry for yourself,' I pointed out.

'Not now,' said Blue. 'But when my wounds were healing, I certainly did.'

'But that's a physical injury,' I protested.

'So's yours,' replied Blue. 'The difference is: I had one bad thing happen to me, a long time ago, and I've had time to recover. You've been terrorised for hundreds of years, with no friends you felt you could turn to for help, and that sort of constant fear eats away at the brain, and then it trains you to go on _feeling_ as if you're in danger, even when you're not.'

'Do I?'

'I've been watching you since you came here,' said Blue. 'You're getting better, but you're still pretty twitchy. I've seen the way you look as if you don't know whether to freeze or run for cover, if there's an unexpected noise or someone raises their voice. Speaking of which – there's a festival tomorrow with things called fireworks. They won't hurt you unless you're holding one when it goes off, but they make a loud banging noise as they burst into pretty coloured stars, so I thought I'd better let you know they're nothing to worry about.'

'I hate those things,' I said. 'We went to a funfair back in the summer that had them. But – well, for someone who's lived with a gigantic monster who kept threatening to eat me if I didn't do as he said, you wouldn't think anything else would be frightening by comparison, but it still is! I'm a complete coward.'

'No,' said Blue. 'You're brave enough to face up to things that frighten you, because there aren't any other options, because _everything_ frightens you. Nutters like Lola who don't know how to be frightened don't understand how much courage that takes. But learning that there are times when you don't need to be frightened at all, is going to take longer. You'll get there, though.'

'But if my brain's permanently damaged by all the fear swilling around inside it…?' I began.

'Yeah – same as your liver would be damaged if you kept drinking loads of booze,' said Blue. 'Either way, it recovers once you stop doing it. You just need to find things that get you out of this cycle of feeling bad.'

'Like fairy dust?' I asked wryly.

'Well – probably not fairy dust _all_ the time,' Blue admitted. 'Mostly you seem to take refuge in reading. Does that work for you?'

'Mostly,' I said. 'Just not when I'm so wound up that I can't read, or when I find something new to worry about in the book I'm reading. What do you use?'

'Computer games,' said Blue. 'And back-rubs. Speaking of which, would you like a back-rub now?'

The day before, I'd have flinched at the thought of letting anyone touch me, but now I said, 'That's – probably a good idea,' and twitched aside my handkerchief-blanket so that Blue could rub one stubby, clawless finger around my back, up and down my spine, around my shoulders and neck, massaging all the tension away. When he had finished, I stretched, and then got dressed in the stack of clean, dry clothes that my Master had left on the table beside me for when I felt ready to put them on.

'Do you think I'll go all strange again, the way I've been doing?' I asked.

'Maybe, sometimes,' said Blue. 'Does it matter if you do?'

'But why did it happen _now_?'

'Maybe because this is the first time you've been able to risk being ill,' said Blue. 'Probably your brain did this to find out whether we only saw you as a machine to be used as long as you were in good working order, or whether we cared about you enough to look after you when you're ill.'

'And now I know.'


	25. Chapter 25

Thursday 5th November 2015

I broke off writing yesterday because I was tired (and weak after a few days of not being awake long enough to eat), but I spent the rest of Wednesday and today catching up on what had been going on. I had been too wrapped up in myself to pay attention to what was going on, but my Master and Miss Guinevere had spent quite a lot of time sitting by me, trying to talk me back to reality. Apparently, they had been prevented from being there _all_ the time only by Blue pointing out that I needed to dream in order to get my thoughts straight, and their parents pointing out that Miss Guinevere needed to be at school, and that my Master would have to satisfy both the school and his social worker that he was keeping up-to-date with homework while he was suspended.

I'm not the only one who's been brooding on the past. Professor Spotiswode keeps phoning up and wanting to talk in private to Johan, who won't say what they're talking about. We've also got a flock of ravens visiting, alternating between visiting the house and strutting around in the back garden, where they have been warned not to eat any of the Grass People. The first two who turned up were Pete and Miranda, coming to report that Slatebeard had settled down happily in the place Hothbrodd had brought him to, a wood by a fjord, but that he was looking forward to having an artificial cave built, as he's really too old and frail to sleep out in the rain and snow.

Everyone had thanked them warmly for the message, and offered them a meal. They were disappointed that there weren't any meat scraps that needed using up, but cheerfully made do with some bread and eggs, and a few wasps who were stumbling round the kitchen looking rather lost. I don't like wasps – they taste too sharp – and none of the humans here wants to kill any creature that takes refuge in this house, but the wasps would probably have died of cold and hunger anyway if we'd put them outside, or stung someone if they were left to congregate in the kitchen.

Miranda then made the bathroom washbasin into an improvised talking pool (after Billy explained to him that humans really don't like it if you spit in their kitchen sink), and since then, they've managed to contact a few dozen more ravens to explain to them that Nettlebrand is dead, and to tell them where to come if they want to learn more. It was easy when we were just trying to contact Nettlebrand by water, as he _always_ expected to hear from his spies, and as he preferred to lurk in or near water anyway. For us minions to try to contact each other by water is far more chancy, and depends on there being two people trying to make a pool-call at the same moment, and each focusing on the thought of the other.

Even if you think you see a face, it could be just wishful thinking. This evening, when Miranda asked me to try to call anyone, for a moment I thought I could see my brother Mizell, before I remembered that he died 348 years ago, and that all I was looking at was my own reflection.

At any rate, by now Pete and Miranda have managed to call a couple of dozen of their friends over here, all of whom want feeding. Professor Greenbloom actually went out to buy some liver and kidneys for them, which he seemed a bit uncomfortable about, as he's usually a vegetarian – but, as he said, the reason offal is so cheap in Britain is that most British people don't like it, so if animals are going to be killed, it's best if as much of them as possible gets used up. The ravens don't mind some vegetarian foods, like cheese and onion quiche and peanut butter sandwiches, but they're not impressed with healthy stuff like chickpea and fennel stew. Johan isn't, either, so yesterday evening he sent out for pizza, and he and my Master and the ravens shared it.

Billy (whose turn it was to clean the house, and who was annoyed at the ravens dropping feathers) asked Miranda why, if they were trying to get in touch with everyone, they didn't just go back to the castle where they were created. Miranda stared at him, first with her left eye, and then with her right. 'Would _you_ go back to a place where you'd been terrorised for hundreds of years?' she asked.

'If there was no-one to terrorise me there _now_ , yes,' said Billy. 'Why did you keep going back there all the years when there was?'

The ravens looked at each other, evidently rather ashamed. 'It was fear,' said Miranda eventually. 'Not just fear of the Gold Lord, but fear of each other, too. Fear that if I tried to run away, the others would drag me back to the Gold Lord as a traitor to be eaten. I mean, obviously I knew Pete wouldn't do anything like that, and I was fairly sure Maria wouldn't, because she was my friend, and maybe Jack wouldn't, because he loved Maria, but – well, I couldn't be sure about everyone.'

The other ravens all nodded at this. 'I'd probably have turned you in if I'd had any evidence against you,' said another raven, whose name I had learned was Rupert. 'But that was mainly so that you couldn't tell his Goldness if _I_ tried to escape.'

'So none of us dared,' said Miranda. 'Fliegen- Twigleg here was the only one who had the courage.'

'Well, you're welcome to stay here if you wish,' said Professora Greenbloom. 'But mightn't you get bored after a while, living in a human house? And it could be a bit crowded, when all your friends are here. I'd have thought you'd want to find your own territories and start building nests, after a while.'

Pete and Miranda looked at each other, embarrassed. So did some of the other ravens who I guessed were probably in love with each other. 'Well,' Miranda said eventually, 'even though we know we're free – it's a bit hard to get used to. I thought the two of us could just go off on our own to get married and find a territory, but – well, we're not exactly normal ravens. We were created to serve Nettlebrand, just as Twigleg was…'

'Don't tell me you want to become a human's slaves as well!' exclaimed Billy. 'What's wrong with everyone?'

'Not at all!' retorted Miranda. 'It's just that – we didn't have parents, so we don't really have any role models for what a successful marriage looks like. So we thought that if we studied the pair-bonding behaviour of humans, silver dragons, and other species, it might give us some idea of how relationships work.'

The Professor and Professora laughed. 'It's very kind of you, but I'm not sure we're ideal role models for you,' said the Professora. 'We're not even birds, after all. I don't mind being friends with you, but I don't know how Twigleg feels about it…'

'I don't mind,' I said. I don't like birds, whether these enchanted ravens or real birds, but they're in a similar enough situation to mine, and I ought to be helpful. I even helped them look up videos of raven courtship rituals on Youtube. Since the smartphone I'd borrowed is currently with Lola and Mouse, who (as far as I know) are still in Norway, I was allowed to borrow Professora Greenbloom's desktop computer, which had a big enough screen for all the birds to perch around and watch. We watched ravens kissing in snowy landscapes, and ravens pecking over a skeleton together and feeding each other scraps of meat. What most of them thought was most romantic, though, was a film of a pair of eagles practising dancing claw-in-claw in mid-air, which came up on the 'raven' search only because there was a raven teasing them.

We felt encouraged enough by these films to look up 'raven parents' as well. Unfortunately, this mainly gave us information on either the parents of human celebrities called Raven, parents of fictional superheroes called Raven, German hostility to mothers who go out to work (British people don't seem to use the phrase 'raven mother' like that), and parents making raven costumes for their children's fancy-dress parties.

In return, since they're here, some of the ravens are helping my Master with geography homework. Between them, they've travelled across most of the world – even more than Lola, if only because they've had hundreds of years to explore. I'm enjoying helping with language homework, though I wish the school had Latin on its syllabus as well as French and Spanish. For one thing, Latin is the root of many world languages, and not just in Europe (Spanish and Portuguese in Central and South America, French in Canada, and French and Portuguese in parts of Africa and some of the Australasian islands), and it is useful to understand where these languages came from. But in addition, Latin itself was the major international scholarly language until a few hundred years ago, enabling an educated Englishman and an educated Dutchman to discuss philosophy, theology and politics without knowing a word of each other's languages. Therefore, it's the obvious language to learn in order to consult the older reference books about fabulous beings. I asked my Master whether he wanted to learn Latin. He looked dubious, and then said, 'I'll think about it.'

Unfortunately, nobody here is very knowledgeable about maths, science, or computer technology. My Master thinks Professor Spotiswode used to teach those when he was Mr Faulwetter, but we don't know how much of his memory of that time he still has now that he has been cured of being a Wight, nor whether he'll even want to go back to anything that reminds him of those times. Johan doesn't remember anything about being a Hollow except feeling constantly ravenous.

When we had some time in private, and I was still thinking about my dreams, I asked my Master whether Mr Faulwetter had ever hit him.

'No!' he said. 'I knew he was weird and creepy, but he never exactly _did_ anything to hurt me. If he'd done anything obviously bad, like hitting me or touching my bum or not giving me anything to eat, he knew I could tell my social worker, and she'd have taken me back to the orphanage. I didn't want _that_ , but I didn't want to go on living with Mr Faulwetter either, so I ran away. I suppose,' he added thoughtfully, 'I suppose he was trying to decide whether I was a Peculiar or not, and if I had been, he'd have fed me to his Hollow. I suppose that's why he decided to be a foster carer, and a teacher.'

'He said he'd been a teacher before,' I said. 'And before, it would have been for the opposite reason – to find young Peculiars so that he could help them understand what they were, so that they could decide whether to live out their lives in the outside world, or go and be young forever in a Time Loop. But I don't know whether he'd want to go back to being one now.'

'I hope he does,' my Master said. 'Johan let me talk to him for a bit yesterday, and he says he doesn't know if he can teach me to be a telepath, but he can try. And when I told him about the Tree People and Grass People, he said we could make a project of making tiny microphones for them so that they can talk to us without having to shout.'

Neither he nor any of the Greenbloom family seems at all worried about having an ex-Hollow and an ex-Wight in the house. So perhaps Professor Spotiswode needs to come back here to learn to accept that nobody blames him or thinks of him as a monster (I didn't mean to eavesdrop on his phone conversations with Johan, but my hearing is so much sharper than a human's that it is hard not to overhear things – or perhaps I'm just too used to being a spy).

And somewhere, in a place where it's always 1940, Mouse's creator is terrorising clay people because he is terrified of the Hollows. Humans have a saying that those who are abused become abusers. I suppose that's what my dreams were about – fear of what I might be, if I were big enough and strong enough to attack anything larger than insects.

But then, it's not a matter of whether I might, theoretically, _become_ an abuser. I _was_ , just as much as the ravens were. We may not personally have gone round killing people, but we helped a monster find prey, just as the Wights did.

I hope we can make up for it somehow.

PS – I broke off writing this because the firework parties had started in all the neighbouring gardens, and I needed to spend the rest of the evening with my hands clamped over my ears, which isn't a good position for writing in. But I was sitting on my Master's shoulder outside, watching the fireworks, and I have to admit that they did look beautiful.


	26. Chapter 26

Monday 9th November 2015

Lola and Mouse arrived back this morning. It turns out that they hadn't been in Norway all this time after all, but had flown over to Ireland to find Kuriana (who had been staying near Professor Spotiswode, Atticus and his new family) and ask her to come over to Wales. Then, the three of them had travelled to the Welsh island containing the Peculiars' home in which Mouse was made. Kuriana is now hiding in the (modern-day) ruins of the bombed-out building which used to be the orphanage. Mouse is hoping to pass through the Time Loop that leads back to 3rd September 1940, so that he can rescue any of his clay brothers who want to leave, and bring them out of the Loop to meet Kuriana, so that she can harden them into proper golems, like him.

'Couldn't Kuriana go into the Loop?' I asked. 'After all, if these Peculiars are used to seeing unusual things, they might not panic too much about seeing a dragon.'

I could imagine some of the other children in the Loop whom Mouse had told me about – maybe the little levitating girl, the brawny super-strong girl, or the invisible boy – even wanting to come and pat Kuriana. But if she talked to Enoch about abusing his power over the people he brought into the world – well, she might be able to make more of an impression on him than punishment could ever do.

'She was too big,' said Mouse. 'You have to walk through a tunnel to go back in time, and it's low enough that even a human would have to crawl rather than walking upright. Not that any humans apart from Peculiars can travel in time anyway, of course. I can – or I could before, when I left – and I don't know whether that's something all enchanted creatures, like homunculi and enchanted ravens, can do, or whether it's because I was born in a Loop.'

'Did you go back in?' I asked.

'I didn't dare,' Mouse admitted. 'At least – Lola flew me through the tunnel and we just came out in the present day, but that could just be because she's not a Peculiar and you couldn't get toy aeroplanes like hers in 1940. I ought to have walked in on my own and faced Enoch myself, but I was too much of coward. So, I was wondering whether – maybe if you came with me…'

'I'm a coward, too,' I said. 'I can't cope with frightening things unless I'm with my Master.' Mouse looked so despondent that I added, 'But I'll come with you anyway, if it helps. That way, whichever of us starts screaming first, the other one will need to comfort him, and will probably be too busy with that to think of panicking.'

'I can come with you,' my Master offered. 'After all, if I _am_ a Peculiar, I can come through the tunnel with you. And if not, at least you'll know that I'm just at the other end.'

'It's a nice idea,' said Professor Greenbloom. 'And I've got to admit that I wouldn't mind visiting Wales again. I've heard some interesting rumours of sightings of afancs (pronounced avancs) and water leapers. Water leapers are like a sort of giant frog with bat wings, no legs, a long tail with a stinger on the end, but nobody seems to be sure what afancs look like – they've been compared to everything from crocodiles to beavers. But we'd better not go anywhere until the weekend, at least. We've got another appointment with your social worker on Wednesday, and we need to be able to satisfy her that while you're suspended from school, I'm keeping you at home and making sure you get on with the work the school sends you, rather than constantly rushing off on holiday.'

'Do you want to wait until the weekend?' my Master asked Mouse and me.

'I suppose a few more days probably won't make much difference after seventy-five years, but – I just don't want to leave it any longer,' said Mouse. 'At the very least, I need to go in, confront Enoch, and talk to any of the clay men who'll listen. But we need to set up a sculpting programme to do what Twigleg did for me – give them facial features, mouths, and hands, before Kuriana fires them. If you could lend me any sculpture tools – things like pins or cocktail sticks for carving fine detail, brushes for creating hair texture, and so on – I can make a start as soon as I get back.'

'I'll come with you – that is, if _you_ can spare me,' I added to my Master, who nodded encouragingly. 'I think I'll be all right, because the place you came from isn't _my_ nightmare. If we sculpt a couple of the volunteers and bring them through the loop and then Kuriana fires them, they might be able to come back and sculpt some more.'

'What about us?' put in Bwbach indignantly. 'I bet brownies can get through magical tunnels into the past, and we've got sharp claws for sculpting with – well, except Blue, and he's handier with tools than the rest of us put together.'

'And birds are renowned for their skill as time travellers, so enchanted birds should have even more of an advantage,' added Miranda, 'and we've got claws _and_ beaks.'

After some discussion, we realised that all the humans and several of the ravens wanted to visit Wales, and get into the Loop if possible, but that none of the brownies except Bwbach wanted to leave the house. Lola, on the other hand, wants to go back to Ireland to catch up on seeing friends there whom she'd barely had time to talk to when they were looking for Kuriana. So the plan is that Johan will drive his van down tomorrow with me, Mouse, Bwbach, Miranda, Pete, Rupert, and Rupert's girlfriend Bess, and that we'll do what we can before everyone else comes to join us at the weekend. It's a hundred miles from here to the island, so about two hours' drive followed by a ferry ride onto the island itself.

In the meantime, Mouse has spent the evening telling us everything he knows about the home in the Loop, the Headmistress who runs it and who can turn into a peregrine falcon, the children, the slobbery old dog, the topiary centaur in the garden who comes alive when a certain girl pulls on his tail, the way it's always a sunny day there, and the way the people in the Loop feast on roast goose and salmon every day, and the way there's a bombing raid every night, like the firework parties last Thursday but even noisier, with the Loop re-setting to the previous day just before a bomb can destroy the house.

I don't know where they get so much food from, as they're living in a time when there is a war on, and everyone else in Britain is living on rations. Mouse couldn't explain that – as he doesn't eat, I suppose he'd never thought about it. Possibly the orphanage has some kind of farm – but if time never passes there, how could animals or plants grow to adulthood and be killed and eaten?

Mouse said that his creator and some of the other older children make a game of stealing from the neighbouring village, outside the Loop, knowing that everything will be back to normal there by the next day. Johan and Professor Greenbloom smiled in an embarrassed way and admitted that when they were children, they did that, too. Apparently, leaving a Loop is dangerous for Peculiars as it can cause sudden ageing, but only if they stay out for more than an hour or so – a brief visit is safe enough. (Of course, for a shapeshifter like Johan, it doesn't matter anyway, as he can just morph into the form of someone younger.) So perhaps, even in a Loop set during a war, the Headmistress could go to the shops earlier in the day – _before_ her charges have been causing trouble – and buy food, using up a week's worth of money and rationing points, because tomorrow is exactly the same day and by then the ration book will be unmarked again and the money back in her purse.

At any rate, there is a ready supply of animal hearts from the butcher. Enoch uses the chicken hearts, as well as the hearts of trapped mice, for animating his clay men, and transplants the hearts of bigger animals like pigs into a dead friend of his, to revive him for a few minutes so that everyone can chat to him. Mouse says that when the clay battles aren't just all-against-all (which they frequently are), the Mouse-Hearts join into one army to fight against the Chicken-Hearts.

Mouse isn't sure what to do about this tribal rivalry. If the Mouse-Hearts accept him, the Chicken-Hearts might regard him as their enemy and want to smash him to pieces – but on the other hand, the Mouse-Hearts might still regard him as a traitor because he ran away rather than help to mash Chicken-Hearts.

If they want to be made into golems, we don't know whether they'll want to be sculpted first (Mouse did, but he admits he's unusual), nor what forms they'll want to take. They might not want to be humanoid at all. Possibly the Mouse-Hearts will want rodent features (Mouse quite likes the idea of sculpting statues of Lola), and the Chicken-Hearts might want birdlike beaks (the ravens hope they will, anyway).

What we aren't sure of is what the 'clay men' are made of apart from their hearts. Mouse was made from plasticine, but, as a child's toy, that might have been even more difficult than food to buy in wartime. If a lot of them are made out of mud scooped out of the ground, what's to stop them drying and cracking before we can bring them to Kuriana?

Still, we can work out the details when we get there and have a chance to talk to them. I'd better get some sleep now. But with an adventure like this waiting to start, it's going to be hard to settle down.


	27. Chapter 27

Tuesday 10th November 2015

Today started by being frustrating and then disturbing, before getting much, much worse. It started when I was woken at about 2am by the sound of my Master's phone ringing in his jacket pocket, which was hanging in a coat-hook on the door. I could neither reach it nor sleep through it, but as Bryony was busy fluttering around, dancing in a beam of street-light through the gap in the curtains (as there wasn't much moonlight last night to dance in), I asked her whether she could fetch the phone. She retrieved it, and brought it over to my Master (who was now just about awake), just as the answerphone cut in. The recorded message ran: 'Ben? It's Ivan – aw, forget it. Just wanted to tell you I'm safe and I'm not coming back. Bye.'

We weren't able to call back, and Ivan didn't phone again. The call didn't even seem to have come from Ivan's mobile, but from some phone with a withheld number. I wondered for a moment whether some terrible disaster had overtaken Ivan, to cause him to try to make a phone call in the middle of the night. Then it occurred to me that he was probably just in a different part of the world by now, and had forgotten the time difference. Even so, we were both too jangled to sleep. My Master told me that Miss Guinevere had told him that Josh hadn't been in school for the past week either, and that nobody knew where the family had disappeared to. Had Ivan's father and brothers gone chasing off after him? Or were they doing something different?

By the time it was light and we could decently get up and start packing Johan's van to set off for Wales, I felt sick with sleep-deprivation, and hoped I'd be able to sleep on the journey. But lying down in the van, and being able to feel its jolting without watching where we were going, felt even worse, and I wished I hadn't let Bwbach talk me into having a thimble of milk, a raisin _and_ half an almond for breakfast. It didn't help that the van smelled vile, not only from the smell of old blood from when Johan was a Hollow and used to devour his victims in there, but because Hollows themselves stink disgustingly, and the weather had been too cold and wet since Johan's recovery for him to have time to air it. In the end, I spent most of the journey sitting on a table in the back of the van, peering out through the rear window so that I could watch the journey – even if watching the places we had just been through rushing away from us backwards felt disconcerting, too. Mouse sat beside me to keep me company, while Bwbach curled up on the bottom bunk and the ravens perched on the rail of the top bunk. It's a pity cars and vans don't come with miniature seats fitted on the dashboard.

We arrived at the ferry terminal and parked. Bwbach morphed into full feline form, and Mouse and I climbed into the long pockets of Johan's waterproof jacket, before he went to the check-in desk to buy a ticket for a van containing one human and one cat. The clerk laughed. 'Haven't been here before, have you?' she said. 'There's no car ferry here – nowhere for cars to get up from the beach, see? We won't charge for your cat, though, if she sits on your lap and behaves herself.'

Bwbach hissed.

'He's a he,' Johan explained. 'His name's Bwbach. But – what do you mean, cars can't get onto the island? You've got cars there, surely? And tractors? We looked at the island on Google maps – there are farms and tractors all over the place!'

'They've got tractors,' the clerk said. 'Not cars. Costs too much to ship the diesel in, so there's only enough for the tractors and the generators, see?' She looked sympathetically at Johan. 'Planning to sleep in your van, were you?'

'We were,' said Johan. 'It's okay – I'll look for a hotel when I get over there. It's just me and Bwbach at the moment – my friend and his wife and kids might be coming out to join us at the weekend.'

The clerk snorted. 'Good luck with finding somewhere!' she said. 'The only hotel I've ever heard of is the Priest Hole, and that's just one room over a pub.'

'Oh. Well – we might stay with friends on the island, then. Anyway – I'll just go and pack, now.'

'How long are you planning to leave that van here, then?'

'Ah, um – until Sunday, I suppose. Maybe longer.'

'Well, you can't leave it here. The car park charges only run up to midnight.'

Johan drove off to find a long-stay car-park, then stuffed his phone, a toothbrush, his wallet and a change of socks and underpants into the pockets that did not contain Mouse and me (unlike my Master, Johan doesn't habitually keep a set of essentials in a rucksack), let the ravens out of a window, and trudged back to the ferry terminal, the ravens flying overhead and trying to look as if they were a separate party and nothing to do with us. It was already raining.

On the island, we established that the room at the Priest Hole was taken, but the pub did serve lunch. Johan ordered pie and chips for himself and a cheese toastie for Bwbach, and slipped a corner of toast into his pocket for me (the ravens stayed outside, fighting the local seagulls for half-eaten takeaways).

After lunch, we set out to search for the Time Loop. Mouse had given us instructions, starting with the tunnel that had its mouth in the cairn. We had a map printed out from the computer showing the route from the ferry terminal to the cairn where Cairnholm Man had been found: the corpse of a teenage boy who had been ritually murdered and immersed in the bog twenty-seven centuries ago. The Wikipedia entry on Cairnholm mentioned that, a few years ago, the curator of the local museum where Cairnholm Man was kept had been murdered under mysterious circumstances, and that there was a local legend that the Man had somehow come alive and broken out of his glass case to murder his custodian. Nobody on the island had wanted to be anywhere near the body after that, and so it had been moved to the British Museum in London.

As we walked, we caught sight of the bombed-out ruins of the children's home. It was hard to believe that soon we were going to be seeing it intact and full of people – both humans and clay men – on a beautiful sunny day seventy-five years ago. In the meantime, several locals, seeing Johan peering at his map in the rain and identifying him as a lost tourist, pointed him in the direction of the cairn. They all evidently thought that he was mad to be interested in going there – especially considering that the ground around the cairn was so soft and marshy that his feet sank up to the knees at every other step – but they didn't seem bothered about deterring insane foreign tourists.

When we found the cairn with the tunnel leading down from it, Johan looked around to check that nobody was watching, and crawled through, followed by Bwbach and the ravens. We emerged to find that 1940 looked – well, a lot like 2015, really. Tractors were still impressing muddy scars across the grass, squashing plastic sweet wrappers into their muddy wheelprints. The generators were still rumbling. In the village, the Chinese takeaway and McDonalds were still competing for custom. And, when we arrived back at the children's home, it was still a seventy-five-year-old ruin.

'Mouse,' said Johan quietly, 'are you _sure_ this was the way into the Loop?'

'It _was_ ,' said Mouse. 'But they were worried that Wights could find it. Maybe they've – changed the entrance route or something?'

He didn't sound convinced, but Johan eagerly agreed. 'Yeah! That'll be it! So – we go and stand around in the children's home _now_ , and wait until someone from _then_ comes to tell us where the entrance from _now_ is now, right?'

'Would they do that?' I asked.

'Sure! They're bound to be on the look-out for lost Peculiars.'

So we went in, and explored the wreckage of decaying food, mouldering coats, and books long solidified into lumps of papier maché. I wondered how the books back in the castle where I was made were getting on. Some of them had been books of magic, and I sometimes wondered if they read their readers. If so, perhaps they knew that they had been my only companions, in the cold, lonely centuries. But these books here – _The Hobbit, Swallows and Amazons_ , _The Family from One End Street_ – were past saving, and I could only feel desperately sorry for them.

Suddenly Mouse screamed. He had been investigating a dolls' house, and found the remains of what had evidently once been crudely-moulded clay and plasticine figures, as he had been when we first met. A group of them had climbed into it, some of them lying in bed, having pushed out the painted wooden dolls who were there first. Others were slumped over them, as if they had staggered upstairs to tend their sick friends, but then collapsed with exhaustion.

I remembered promising Mouse that whichever of us didn't have hysterics first would comfort the one who did. 'It's all right,' I said. 'They're dead _now_ , if they stay here _then_ , but we're going to change the past. We're going to go back and find the right way into the past, as soon as someone comes to show us.'

'If you like, I'll go and reconnoitre now,' said Pete. 'While I'm doing that, maybe Bwbach can find out where Kuriana's got to. You fantastic beings can sense each other, can't you?'

'We itch when there are other fabulous beings around, and there isn't one here,' said Bwbach flatly. 'I've never felt less itchy in my life.'

I sniffed. I could smell the scent of Kuriana – not just a dragon, but Kuriana's personal scent, as distinctive as her beautiful purple scales – but it was faded, as if she hadn't been here for a few days now. I could smell a human scent, too, and it was one I recognised, but I couldn't remember whose it was.

Pete flew off, and came back half an hour later. 'I've had a look at the tunnel,' he said. 'Saw something we didn't notice before.'

'What?' we all asked.

'Writing. Human writing. Lists of all the dates that have been Looped with this tunnel as their entrance. The last one said, "3rd September 1940." And then it said, "Closed 13th July 2010."'

We all looked at Mouse. ' _How_ long ago did you leave this place?' I asked.

Mouse stared through me. 'The seasons _changed_ ,' he said. 'The seasons _changed_. Here, it was always a sunny day, always the same sunny day. But when I left, it got cold. The leaves turned red and brown and gold and orange, and then the wind came and blew them off the trees, and the ground froze, and the snow came, and then it melted, and there were flowers, and new leaves grew.'

'How many times?' I asked.

'Six times,' said Mouse. 'I should have come back before. Enoch was right about me. I was a coward and a deserter, and he should have handed me over to be pulled apart. I should have come back to save my brothers. It's too late now.'

And with that, he took off and ran. He was more solidly built than I was, but too small to sink into the marsh as deeply as Johan did. I tried to follow, but I was also trying not to fall over, while Mouse didn't care. He didn't stop running until he hurtled over the edge of a cliff, down to the rocky beach far below.


	28. Chapter 28

Tuesday 10th November 2015 continued

We rushed to the edge, to see whether there was some remote chance that Mouse might have survived – perhaps if he'd managed to fall on a patch of soft sand, or even a mound of seaweed discarded by a particularly high tide. I was so frantic with anxiety about him that I forgot that I was afraid of heights until I looked down and the view made me so dizzy that I stumbled and had to grab hold of a tuft of sea thrift (as far as I could tell, from the faded pink flowers remaining on it).

Bwbach hooked a claw into my jacket to lift me back onto firm ground. 'Don't _you_ go over as well!' he said. 'I'll never hear the end of it if I manage to lose _two_ homunculuses on this trip.'

'Homunculi,' I corrected automatically, my mind still buzzing with worry mixed with hope. Could Mouse have grabbed hold of a clump of rock samphire, or even fallen into the convenient juniper bush clinging to the cliff halfway down? Without a dwarfish hat on, there was no way I could focus enough to climb down and investigate, and even Johan (who is the kind of man who isn't frightened of _anything_ ) and Bwbach were looking dubious.

'It's quickest if we fly down to the beach,' I said. 'If Mouse has fallen, he might be alive but badly hurt, and we need to get there as soon as possible. But we need someone to check the cliff as well, and it's useful to have an extra set of eyes. Miranda, would you mind giving me a lift on your back?'

Miranda laughed. 'Sure – it'll be just like old times!'

'Except that now you're not reporting back on me, or abandoning me in the desert to make my own way – you're not, are you?' I added, not quite sure whether I was joking.

'Promise I won't – raven's honour.'

'Wait – if I morph into a dragon, I can fly down with Bwbach,' suggested Johan. 'There's no-one around, after all.'

'Too dangerous if anyone _does_ come by,' said Bwbach, still in cat-form. 'We'll have to look for a path down to the beach.'

So Bess and Rupert inspected the cliff for any crevices, handholds or plant-life that might harbour a formerly-suicidal golem-homunculus who had changed his mind. Meanwhile, Pete, and Miranda with me on her back, flew down to the beach, dreading what we might find.

One confusing thing about humans is that they sometimes use the word 'literally' to mean 'metaphorically', as in, 'he literally went to pieces,' or, 'I'm literally shattered by this news.'

With golems, there is no metaphor involved.

We found Mouse's left hand first, then both legs, his upper torso, his lower torso from the waist down, his right arm, the remainder of his left arm, and, finally, his head. They had bounced off a large rock and scattered in various directions, and the ravens had to retrieve most of the parts from a rock pool. His head, however, was lying on a rocky ledge above the pool, with his nose chipped and his left ear crumbled past repair. His eyes still glowed red, but only faintly, suggesting that he was still alive but might not be for much longer.

'Did you _mean_ to kill yourself?' asked Miranda.

The head rocked backwards and forwards – a nod.

'Do you want to die now?' I asked. 'We might be able to save you – but would you rather die?'

The head rocked from side to side, then back and forth, then from side to side again, confused. Perhaps, if Mouse had still had shoulders attached, he would have shrugged.

'Can you talk?' I asked.

'The last…' said Mouse faintly. 'Too late – my brothers – gone – last of my kind…'

'So am I!' I pointed out. 'But we can discuss wanting to die, later. First of all, can we try and stick you back together, and discuss this when you're feeling better?'

The head rocked back and forth again.

'We'd better take him up and lay him on something flat before we start mending him,' I said. 'We'll do his head and torso first – could one of you grab his chest, and the other one his hips, please? And if I get back on Miranda's back – Pete, could you pass me the head?'

So, on the journey up, I clung grimly onto Miranda's feathers with my legs, jabbing the heels of my boots into her neck (as she later told me) so that I could cradle Mouse's head in both my arms, with his face turned towards me so that he couldn't see the alarming sight of his other body parts being gathered up. As we passed the other birds, we yelled to Rupert to fetch something flat and stiff from the house, and to Bess to fetch Bwbach.

In the meantime, I talked to Mouse. I told him how much I loved him, and how excited I had been to meet another homunculus after all centuries of being alone. I reminded him how pleased Lola was to have a flying companion who didn't get airsick. I pointed out that, just as he had wanted to save his brothers if he could, _we_ wanted to save _him_. I reminded him of all the hard work I had gone to in sculpting him, and all the pain he had endured in being sculpted, and asked whether it was worth having gone through all that if he was going to commit suicide. All in all, I was disgracefully manipulative, but at least, by the time we arrived, the fire in Mouse's eyes was glowing a little brighter.

Up on the clifftop, Bwbach spat on the broken surfaces between Mouse's head and neck and his upper and lower torso, stuck them together with his sticky brownie-saliva, and laid him gently on a stiff, hard-backed copy of _Babar the Elephant_. Fortunately, it had stopped raining by now, so we didn't have to worry about the saliva washing away or the book becoming waterlogged.

'Hadn't we better splint him, until the glue sets?' I asked. 'Otherwise, if he rolls over, he could come unstuck.'

'I – don't think there's – any danger – of that,' said Mouse weakly. 'I – can't – move – at all.'

It turned out that we didn't have anything to splint Mouse's body parts with anyway, nor any sticky tape, sticking-plasters or anything of the kind to attach the splints. The ravens managed to retrieve all the bits of his missing limbs, chipped and missing a few fingers and toes (I wished I hadn't let Mouse persuade me to make his digits so long and delicate) but basically salvageable, and Bwbach glued them back in place.

Then all we could do was carry Mouse back to the shelter of the only partly derelict house to wait while the glue set solidly, and hope that Kuriana would come back and could breathe fire on him to heal him. Mouse was too exhausted and ill to talk much, and we didn't want either to talk about the grim situation and worry him even more, or be quiet and leave him to worry about it in silence. Fortunately, Mouse broke the silence by saying, 'Can we – I mean, could you – bury them – my brothers, I mean? I don't think even Enoch could bring them back to life, if we could get them back, and – well – the lives he gave us were pretty agonising anyway, and the humans he raised to life never seemed very pleased to be dragged back from heaven. But – well – I don't know whether clay people go to heaven, but they came from the earth and I expect they'd like to go back there.'

So we collected as many of the clay men as we could. There were only about a dozen, out of the hundred or so that Mouse remembered. Perhaps the rest had wandered out of the building when the Loop was broken, and been squashed by the hooves of cows or carthorses, or – when the island embraced modern technology – the wheels of tractors. Johan found a wooden box big enough to act as a coffin for all of them – Mouse didn't think they'd mind sharing, as they had been always lived communally – and dug a pit in the overgrown garden with a coal-shovel. The ground was so soft and muddy that it was easy work.

Then we had to think of a suitable funeral speech. Mouse, still lying flat on his book because it didn't seem a good idea to tilt him forward so that he could even see his dead brothers, could only manage, 'I – I'm sorry I was too late to save you. I ran away because I didn't like fighting, but probably the rest of you didn't either, and you just didn't think you had any choice. You deserved a proper life.'

Everyone looked at me as if they expected me to take over. I said, 'You died like men. Humans are made of earth, and so were you, even if their evolution took billions of years and yours took a few minutes. Humans have hearts that beat, life given to them by their parents, and so your life came from other living creatures. Your creator may not have thought you were real people, but _his_ Creator surely knew that you were.'

Pete composed a funeral poem:

 _Should you be a tasty morsel_

 _(Rabbit, pigeon, fox, or horse'll_

 _Do us nicely), birds of course'll_

 _Give you burial safe inside._

 _Since you're mineral, not meaty,_

 _Earth, not ravens, comes to greet 'ee._

 _Bedded in the soil so peaty,_

 _May you evermore reside._

Finally, Bwbach sang a soft, plaintive brownie lullaby. Its first two verses are traditionally sung at dawn (as so many brownies are nocturnal), and the latter two are added at funerals:

 _Rising sun, work is done_

 _In the house, in the barn, in the mill._

 _Weary paws, cease your chores and be still._

 _Silver moon, fading soon_

 _(By her light dragons fly through the sky)._

 _Now it's dawn, come and sleep. God is nigh._

 _Dragons dead, overhead,_

 _Form the stars through the night shining bright._

 _Dawn may hide; they abide, out of sight._

 _Gone to earth; till rebirth,_

 _Dragon tears scorch the place where you lie._

 _Where they burn, you'll return, by and by._

'Do dragon tears really do that?' asked Johan. 'I thought even their _breath_ didn't burn things, let alone their tears.'

'I think it depends,' said Bwbach. 'I don't have much experience of dragons, but my mum was brought up with them, and she said they can control how hot their fire is – whether they want it to be hot enough to cook food, or gentle for healing someone. But when they grieve deeply, they weep over the graves of those they love and scorch them.'

'I just hope humans don't decide that dragon tears are a valuable potions ingredient and it's worth locking dragons up and trying to make them miserable so that they'll cry,' I said. I thought of the newspaper reports I had read about illegal trading in tiger and rhinoceros parts.

By evening, when there was still no sign of Kuriana, Johan said, 'I don't fancy sitting around in this place all night. Why don't we leave a couple of the ravens here as guards, catch a boat back to the mainland, and sleep in the van?'

'I really don't think we should move Mouse at the moment,' I said. Bwbach's saliva had glued Mouse's body parts firmly together, and seemed to have set, but he was still paralysed from the neck down. 'We need a dragon to heal him properly.'

'Hey, no problem!' called Johan, morphing into a dragon again – not a silver dragon this time, but a purple-scaled miniature replica of Kuriana (I didn't point out to him that his straight horns meant he had taken a _dragoness_ form, but Bwbach and the ravens sniggered). Crouching over the picture-book on which Mouse lay, in the entrance to the house, he blew a jet of blue flame.

Mouse sat up, patted the joins of his repairs to make sure they felt secure, and then stepped out of the flaming wreckage of _Babar_. A sudden gust of wind blew the book open. One page flew at Bwbach, who yowled first in fear and then in pain as he felt his fur catch fire, and immediately ran to the nearest puddle and rolled in it to put the flames out. In the meantime, the remainder of Johan's flames had already set light to the house.

'Quick!' yelled Johan. 'Jump on me! We fly!' He hadn't bothered to undress before changing into dragon-form, but had stayed roughly human-sized, so that his clothes were still on him, slightly ripped where his back-spines stuck through them. His wings, unfortunately, were squashed up against his back, underneath a shirt, pullover, and waterproof jacket.

'Quick!' Johan called again. 'Bwbach, you've got sharp claws. Can you cut through my clothes to get my wings out?'

'In a _minute!_ ' growled Bwbach. 'I'm still soothing my burns. Healing fire isn't meant to _do_ that! I told you, dragons can control their temperature!'

'Yeah – sorry, got a bit carried away,' mumbled Johan. 'I've met so many different dragon species lately. Still, if you can walk, you're better off than Mouse was a minute ago, right?'

'Why can't we just get the ferry back?' grumbled Bwbach, as he applied his razor-sharp claws to Johan's clothes.

'One – we'll have to wait for it. Two – they're bound to notice someone's just committed arson, and if they see a man hurrying away from a burning house with a burnt cat, it'll arouse their suspicions.'

'And a dragon flapping over to the mainland won't?' Bwbach retorted.

'No, course not! It's totally dark, and we'll land somewhere in the hills, then change and walk back to my van. Now, put Mouse and Twigleg in my pockets, you climb on my back, and we'll be off.'

So we made ourselves ready for take-off. Johan flapped his wings, flapped a bit more strongly, took a bit of a run-up, leapt a few inches in the air, and splashed down again into a puddle. 'What the…? I could do this a couple of weeks ago! Why's it not working now?' he wailed.

'It's the wrong time of the month,' Bwbach sighed.

'What?' snapped Johan, and then realisation dawned. 'Oh no, you mean...?'

'I'm afraid so,' I confirmed.

'I should've turned into a silver dragon again,' Johan muttered. 'If I'd been thinking about Firedrake or Slatebeard, I'd have turned into a _male_ dragon. But no, thinking about Kuriana made me female, and nobody _told_ me female dragons got _cramps!_ '

' _NO!_ ' we all shouted. 'It's a _moonless_ night! Dragons can only fly in the moonlight!' I explained.

'Oh.'

So Johan resumed human form, Bwbach went from brownie-form to cat-form (and then insisted that Johan carry him as he was too tired and sore to walk), and we all went back to the ferry terminal. Fortunately, we were just in time to catch the last ferry, and then trudged back to the van, where Johan cleaned and dressed Bwbach's burns (Bwbach has decided to stay in cat-form until we get home, as shape-shifting makes his bandages too tight) and checked that Mouse was all right, and everyone went to bed. I felt I needed to write all this down before I could relax enough to sleep, but everyone else is fast asleep by now.

Thinking back, I know whose scent I could smell in the house apart from Kuriana's. It was Dr Marrs'.


	29. Chapter 29

Wednesday 11th November 2015

We none of us slept last night. Mouse says that he's feeling all right physically, thanks to Bwbach's saliva and Johan's fire, but he couldn't sleep for trying to convince himself that, somehow, this had all been _his_ fault, for running away in the first place and not thinking to try to help his brothers until it was too late. In his position, I'd have been crying, but clay can't cry, so instead Mouse kept rolling around, clattering against the table we were lying on until I was afraid he might chip himself further, or even roll onto the floor and break again. In the end, Bwbach had to stick his legs together and his arms to his sides with sticking-plasters (at least we had those in the van), wrap him up in a spare sock of Johan's and fasten it with elastic bands, and sit holding onto him until he'd calmed down. Eventually, when Mouse was less agitated and just despondent, he said, 'But you've all done so much to help me. I ought to help my brothers. I can't pay _you_ back for all you've done. I need to pay it _on_ to someone. If my brothers are dead, who else is there?'

'There's _everyone_ else!' said Johan. 'You could – you could help Spotiswode and me look for Wights and Hollows. If we can restore them to themselves, kids like Enoch won't be so scared they think they _need_ to build clay soldiers to protect them!'

'We need to look for Kuriana first!' interrupted Bwbach fiercely.

'No, no, you see, I've worked it out. If I can turn into a dragon when I need to heal with fire, we don't need _another_ dragon!' said Johan excitedly. 'And I'll be much easier to get through Customs, too.'

'No! You need to look for Kuriana to make sure she's all right!' said Bwbach. 'What if this Dr Marrs captured her? He could be doing _anything_ to her now!'

'Oh. Right,' said Johan.

We decided we needed to find out what was going on. So, when it was daylight, Johan shape-shifted to look like Dr Marrs, and set out to the ferry terminal again, with me and Mouse in his pockets.

'Hi there, cutie,' he said to the check-in clerk. 'Remember me, babe?'

The clerk considered for a moment, and then groaned. 'Oh, pig!' she said. 'You're the nutter who insisted he saw a dragon, aren't you?'

'Yeah, but – uh – I might've been a bit drunk then. Maybe even a bit stoned, uh – the fish-and-chip shop had some stuff to sprinkle on the chips that _looked_ like salt, but everything went a bit crazy after that, and – uh – come to think of it, I don't even remember how I got here – wait, I told you I saw a _dragon?_ What did I say it looked like?'

'Well, mostly you said it was purple and it had horns. You were very insistent about that: "It's that _purple_ one again, the one I saw before, with _straight_ horns not curly, I'm sure of it, if we can just pack it into a cage, it'll be an asset in hospitals." If you Yanks are going to cross the Atlantic just to patronise us, I wish you'd at least try to get your folklore right!' she added. 'The Welsh flag is a _red_ dragon, and they don't have horns at all. Just long ragged ears, and darts on their tongues and tails.'

'Have you seen one?' Johan asked eagerly. I wasn't sure whether he was excited on his own behalf, role-playing Dr Marrs, or both.

'No, and nor will you! Any more than you'll see Loch Ness Monsters in Scotland, leprechauns in Ireland, or good rugby players in England! Well – not until your next overdose of "fish and chips", anyway!'

'Yeah, okay, I didn't mean to. Gee, after that, I've lost all sense of time – what day was it I saw the dragon, again?'

'Mon-day. Two _days_ a-go. It's Wed-nes-day now,' said the clerk, with the air of one speaking to an idiot.

'Right, right. And – uh, what did I say this dragon did?'

'You said it'd tried to fly off, but it couldn't fly far because there was barely any moon, so if I'd just call the police, we could capture it, and it wouldn't be able to fly properly before Friday night or Saturday night at the earliest.'

'Yeah? Gee, I must've been high as a satellite.'

The clerk smiled sympathetically. 'Yep, that's the impression I got, too. That's why I promised you I'd call them and ask them to get in touch with you when they'd found your dragon.'

'Oh, well, better be off, then. No sense making a fool of myself again, right?'

Just to be on the safe side, Johan then morphed into the guise of Mr Faulwetter and drove to the nearest police station to ask whether they'd seen anyone of Dr Marrs' description, explaining that he was a friend who was schizophrenic and obsessed with dragons and had wandered off without telling anyone where he was going. They hadn't, which implied that Marrs had either been stupid enough to think that the ferry-ticket clerk had believed him about Kuriana, or (more likely) had realised that no-one would believe him, and had stopped going around talking about dragons without proof. Yet he hadn't gone back to the island, either. And we had no idea where he might be, or whether he was near Kuriana, or whether she was in danger from him.

'And we don't know whether any of my brothers are alive, either,' said Mouse. 'We didn't find the bodies of all of them. If some of the others ran away, like me, they could be anywhere in the world.'

'We'll look it up on the internet,' I promised him. 'We'll type "homunculus sightings" into a search engine, and if there are any videos anywhere in the world of clay-man homunculi like you, or transfigured homunculi like me, or any other variety, they'll come up.'

Johan blinked for a moment. 'Twigleg, you're a genius!' he exclaimed. 'If Kuriana's trail has gone cold, Marrs will be looking on the internet for evidence of her – _or any other dragon!_ If I shapeshift into dragon-form and let myself be spotted, someone's bound to film me on their phone and post it on Youtube. If I stay near major cities where no real dragon would go, lots of people will want to film me, and it'll distract their attention from the valleys where real dragons might be hiding! And by the time any dragon-hunters turn up, I'll be somewhere else!'

'Oh, yeah? And what'll you do if they catch you?' asked Bwbach.

'Turn back into a human, of course. Then they must have hallucinated the dragon. C'mon – it's way harder to believe in shapeshifters than in dragons!'

'But won't people recognise you, after a while?' Bwbach argued.

'Why should they? I won't be the same human every time – or the same dragon. As long as I'm Faulwetter whenever people want to see my driving licence or my passport, I'm good.'

' _Your_ passport and driving licence?' I repeated. 'Aren't they Professor Spotiswode's? And didn't he have his passport with him when he went to Ireland with Atticus?'

Johan considered. 'Oh. Uh, yeah,' he said, then brightened. 'Oh well, I could do with a stack of different IDs with different faces on them, anyway,' he said. 'I just need someone with good forging skills – you know what? I _bet_ Atticus has forging skills. Being a vampire, living for centuries without getting much older, needing a new name and a new birth certificate and stuff every few decades – he must be an expert on it. I just need to go to him and…'

'But that's where Kuriana will be heading!' pointed out Bwbach. 'I thought you wanted to lead dragon-hunters like James Marrs _away_ from him?'

'And if Atticus is in the middle of setting up home in some remote farmhouse, looking after three children, and trying to learn how to be a farmer, he probably hasn't had time to stock up on equipment for making forged documents,' I added.

'Yeah, yeah – okay, I'll fly off to a few other places first, get myself filmed, _then_ go and find Atticus,' said Johan. 'Bunch of spoilsports!' he added, with a grin.

'All right,' said Bwbach. 'But can you drop us off home first?'

And that is what Johan did. We managed to arrive back in time for lunch, but he drove off again as soon as he'd engulfed a sandwich. We heard on the news quite late this evening that there seemed to be a spate of pranks involving people making fake dragons. First of all, what looked like a rather small red Welsh dragon, slightly larger than an Irish wolfhound, had been seen in Birmingham at 3pm, trying to join in a game of football with some children in a park, but run away when the mother of one of the children shouted at it. Also, around 6pm, a snakelike, four-legged creature resembling the traditional Chinese dragon, about three metres long, with blue and green scales and red and gold spines along its back, had appeared in a Chinese restaurant, wandered around tables nudging customers to scrounge food from them, which it ate before slinking into the toilets and disappearing. It was thought that the 'Welsh dragon' had probably been someone's dog dressed up in a silly costume, and the 'Chinese dragon' an animatronic model (though it was realistic enough to be able to eat prawn crackers), but nobody was sure whether the two incidents were connected, or what it meant. In any case, there were films of both of them – rather shaky footage, filmed from a distance, of the red dragon, and a lovely close-up of the Chinese dragon's face as it flickered out its long red tongue to lick the camera lens.

'He's overdoing it,' Professor Greenbloom said. 'He never could resist showing off. But he's succeeded in capturing everyone's attention, and he might even increase people's affection for real dragons.'

In the meantime, Mouse and I have been researching homunculi. There seem to be many recorded methods of making us, though I don't know whether they all worked. The most popular versions all involved using human sperm. I used to think human sperm just made humans, but I've been reading about this in the last few months, and apparently conception in mammals involves the woman's body producing an egg, and the man's sperm combining with the egg. So, homunculi who were created by fermenting human sperm in a glass tube or a hollowed-out egg, instead of having half their father's genes and half their mother's, would have half their father's genes and none of anyone else's. Professor Greenbloom says he doesn't see why any man would choose this means of having children. Professora Greenbloom says it's probably because alchemists were the kind of men who had trouble finding wives.

At any rate, most humans who have created homunculi wanted to do horrific things to us, and I was probably luckier than a great many homunculi. It was only after Nettlebrand ate my creator that I read, in one of his books on magic, a list of uses for homunculi, including chopping our heads off and drinking our blood (in order to turn into a sheep); or using it as a lotion (in order to turn into a monkey); or locking us in dark rooms for forty days with nothing to eat except a mixture of blood and milk, then disembowelling us and rubbing our intestines on one's hands and feet (in order to be able to walk on water or travel instantly to anywhere in the world). Compared with all these fates, being eaten by a giant cyborg dragon actually seems a fairly logical death; at least it's easier to understand why monsters need to eat than why anyone would want to turn into a sheep and would go through all the difficult, messy process of creating and then killing another person to achieve this.

There was another experimenter who kept ten exceptionally talented homunculi in jars of water, and asked them to foretell the future. These homunculi weren't just people who had been able to learn a little magic from books, as I have, but savants with innate magical powers, and yet they weren't even able to leave their jars or to touch one another. When one of them (male) managed to escape from his jar and tried to undo the lid of another (female) homunculus's jar, he soon fainted from exposure to air, and had to be put back in his water to revive him. Evidently they were an aquatic species, very different from Mouse or me – but if they had been allowed a large shared aquarium, at least they could have enjoyed each other's company. Perhaps they would even have had the chance to find out whether homunculi can have children, and, if so, what the genetic make-up of their children would be.

Most modern-day humans don't seem interested in doing this, when they can create true human embryos in test-tubes for couple who are having difficulty conceiving children. But after a short search, we found a video of a Russian experimenter trying to create his own homunculus by injecting his sperm into a hen's egg. I _think_ the video was a fake – but all the same, looking at how the man picked up the pale, rubbery creature in a pair of tweezers, I was haunted by the thought that this _might_ be a real homunculus being cruelly pinched. If he/she/it survives, I hope he/she/it manages to find a good home and safety and love and an education and all the good things that he/she/it deserves. But I wish there was more I could do to make sure that happens. In the meantime, I'm probably going to have nightmares tonight, but I don't want to take fairy dust to make them stop. I don't want to hide from reality.


	30. Chapter 30

Sunday 15th November 2015

There was a thin crescent of moon last night, and this morning we had an excited phone call from Atticus in Ireland, to tell us that Kuriana arrived safely last night. She was exhausted by her long journey, and after she had greeted Atticus and his children and retired to a safe place in a disused coal mine, Atticus walked for miles to find a place where his mobile phone would work, so that he could call us. There aren't any public pay-phones in the county where he's living, and his house doesn't have a landline or internet access.

Atticus hasn't got round to becoming a farmer yet, so he is still living by hunting, but trying to be ecologically responsible by hunting invasive species that have become a pest. Lately, Atticus and Lucy (who is feeling much better now) have mainly been drinking American mink escaped from fur farms, Canada geese, and yellow-bellied sliders (American terrapins which people buy as pets, then get bored with and release). Lucy says the geese taste best.

Atticus is worried about Kuriana getting lonely. There aren't any other dragons in Ireland, and haven't been since St Patrick drove them out in the 5th century. (Ireland's patron saint is someone who actually lived there, unlike St George, whom the English adopted as their patron saint just because they liked the idea of a dragon-slaying soldier as their patron. On the other hand, it's quite likely that George was a much-maligned man who never actually killed a dragon, and the legends are getting him mixed up with someone else.) Also, the most common kobold species, leprechauns, aren't as friendly to dragons as brownies are; before St Patrick's time, leprechaun warriors used to wear armour made of dragon-skin.

Professor Spotiswode is coming back to England shortly. He's still using the Rudolf Faulwetter passport for now, but Atticus has taken some photos of Spotiswode on his phone (after all, it still works as a camera even if he can't actually use it to phone people) and has promised to create a realistic British passport in the name of James Spotiswode, with a date of birth in 1975, and send it over by one of the ravens as soon as possible.

After the phone call, my Master was very quiet.

'Are you all right?' I asked.

'Yes, it's just – I wish Atticus could come back. I know he's just across the Irish Sea, not on the other side of the world like Firedrake, but – well, whenever I make friends, they go off and do something else. Firedrake and Maia are going to be busy helping the Scottish dragons settle into life in the Rim of Heaven and helping the Himalayan dragons get used to being awake again, and probably they'll have children and be even busier, Atticus is busy with his family, Johan's running around pretending to be a dragon, and Ivan – I don't even know where Ivan is or if he's all right!'

'And I've been busy spending time with Mouse, and with the Tree People before I met Mouse,' I said. 'I haven't been very faithful to my Master.'

'I told you, you're my friend, not my slave!' said my Master. 'There's nothing wrong with you wanting to be friends with other people as well as me, and you've been really kind to everyone, especially Mouse. And if you do ever decide you want to go off and do something different, too, then obviously you can. We'll still be friends.'

'I _won't_ want to!' I said. 'I just want to be with you all your life and…' I stopped myself just in time from saying, 'and die when you do.' I don't know whether he knows about that, but I don't want him to worry about it or feel guilty, as if he'd made me mortal. He didn't. I _chose_ to be mortal.

Monday 16th November

Two people arrived today. One is Professor Spotiswode, looking much more peaceful and relaxed than when we saw him last. He is looking forward to teaming up with Johan to search for Wights and Hollows when Johan returns, but in the meantime, he offered to make himself useful by helping with homework. My Master groaned at the thought of settling down to Maths and Science homework (I'm afraid I haven't been able to be much use there), but Professor Spotiswode managed to persuade him that they're important for understanding electronics. So at the moment, the three of us (because this looked so interesting that I couldn't bear not to be involved in it) are dividing lesson time between completing the worksheets that the school emails to us, and working out a design for a microphone that would enable Tree People and Grass People to talk to humans without having to shout.

The other arrival, who came to join us around lunchtime, was a raven called Ferdie. 'Bad news!' he cawed, as soon as he had arrived and been fed some pieces of pig heart.

'What sort of bad news?' Professor Greenbloom asked. 'Is Slatebeard all right?'

'Slatebeard? Don't know a dwarf of that name. But there are plenty _more_ dwarves who are in trouble.'

'What's wrong?' my Master asked. In spite of the trouble that Gravelbeard caused us, he seems to have rather a soft spot for dwarves, just as he has for fairies, and for brownies, and for virtually any creature. Considering that he likes _me_ , after all the trouble _I_ caused, I suppose this shouldn't be surprising.

'Humans, of course!' snapped Ferdie. 'What other creatures are always the problem? They're driving a road through the mountains by our castle, and making tunnels where the climb would be too steep. They thought _that_ would make it easier for the poor little wolves and lynxes to cross on the hills above the road!' Ferdie clicked his beak irritably. 'But instead, that means they're punching holes through the mountain, and they're going to blast right through a dwarf village.'

'Well, if the people who planned the road can be bothered to care about wolves and lynxes, that's better news than I expected,' said Professor Greenbloom. 'And it does suggest that they might care about dwarves, too, if they knew they existed.'

'Barnabas!' said Professora Greenbloom. 'You've seen what happened when you managed to prove that dragons exist.'

'I know,' said Professor Greenbloom wretchedly. 'We _should_ be able to educate people, but protecting fabulous beings has to come first. But the question is, how? Ferdie, do you know how long it is until they destroy the dwarves' home?'

'How should I know?' snapped Ferdie. 'I'm four hundred years old – I've seen you humans get a lot speedier in the last hundred years or so. You want to do everything faster.'

'Did you warn the dwarves?' asked Professor Greenbloom.

'Me? The dwarves have taken against us since last summer. If one of us lands round there, all they do is throw stones at us and yell, "What've you done with Gravelbeard, you big bully?" They even came up to the castle a couple of months ago, demanding him back.'

'Then we need to go there and tell them he's all right, as well as telling them about the tunnel,' said my Master. 'Hey – they'd probably all want to go to the Rim of Heaven! You saw how excited Gravelbeard was about that cave, didn't you, Twigleg? And I'm sure Firedrake and Maia could do with a few more helpers to free all the stone dragons.'

'Oh, yeah?' retorted Ferdie. 'And how're you going to get twenty-six dwarves to the "Rim of Heaven" – if it even exists?'

'It does – we've been there!' said my Master excitedly. 'But it's very hard to get to, except by flying…'

'Well,' said Professor Spotiswode, 'Atticus says Kuriana is getting decidedly bored and lonely, having to stay in hiding. I imagine she'd relish the chance of an adventure as much as any dragon would.'

'Is she strong enough?' Professor Greenbloom asked. 'It's a long journey, and she's an old dragon, after all.'

'Well, I'm not an expert, but she seemed fairly healthy to me, the last time I saw her,' said Professor Spotiswode. 'The least we can do is ask her, rather than decide on her behalf that it's too dangerous or too taxing or too anything else.'

'I suppose you're right,' said Professor Greenbloom worriedly. 'But I think if someone's going to warn these dwarves about the tunnel, it needs to be as soon as possible, and it needs to be someone who can go there more unobtrusively than a human – let alone a dragon. And, Ben, we do have an appointment with your social worker on Wednesday. In any case, there won't be enough moonlight for a dragon to fly very strongly for a few days yet. So perhaps it would be best if a raven – not you, obviously, Ferdie, you've only just got here, but someone who knows the dwarves – could go and warn them about the tunnelling, and lead them to safety. And then, maybe on Friday we could catch a ferry over to Ireland, visit Atticus, and see if Kuriana is willing to go on this journey.'

'And if she _is_ , she might let me fly on her back as far as the mountains!' said my Master happily. 'Do you think I'd be too heavy to carry to the Rim of Heaven as well as the dwarves? How much does a dwarf weigh?'

'Probably about a kilo, even if he's not wearing armour,' said Miranda. 'They're a pain to carry, I can tell you. I'd rather have Twigleg on my back any day.'

I had feared this was coming. I may get on marginally better with Miranda now than when Nettlebrand sent me out on her to spy on Firedrake and his friends, but I still didn't relish the prospect of another journey on her back. 'Do you need me to come with you?' I asked her warily.

'Me? Nah, I'll be fine on my own. But if you could come with Ben in a few days' time, just to prove I was telling the truth, it'd help.'

'And, Ben,' said Professor Greenbloom, 'I know you miss Firedrake, and I know you're the Dragon Rider first and foremost. If you do decide to go to the Rim of Heaven right now, instead of waiting until Christmas, I can't stop you. But – at the moment I'm your foster carer, and I'd like to be allowed to be your father, if you still want that. And if Social Services find out that Vita and I let you travel to the Himalayas without us, I don't think we could convince them that we're looking after you responsibly, or that we're fit to adopt you. But it's your decision.'

My Master looked torn.

'Alternatively,' Professor Greenbloom continued, 'we could compromise. If Kuriana is willing to make this journey, and if Lola is willing to be her guide, then you – and Twigleg, if he wants to come with you – could fly on Kuriana's back as far as the dwarf village, while I go by car or train to the nearest place I can reach. Then I could come and meet you, and perhaps have a chance to say hello to these dwarves, before I take you home. You may have missed a few days of homework assignments from your school, but not too many, and as I'm supposed to be teaching you at the moment, we can say it was an educational field trip to improve your knowledge of geography, and that you were with a friend of ours – which is true, after all. Is that better than nothing?'

I think we've agreed on that plan. Miranda left soon after lunch, after I'd scribbled a brief note in dwarven runes to explain that Gravelbeard was alive and well, and that we'd be bringing news of him shortly.


	31. Chapter 31

Friday 20th November 2015

I'm writing this in Atticus's house, which is more comfortable than it looks from outside. Atticus and Professor Spotiswode have boarded up all the windows to prevent sunlight from coming in (even though they're all dhampirs rather than pure-bred vampires, so won't actually crumble to dust from sunlight, they still don't like it). But then they bought some solar panels and LED lights, so that the nasty sunlight can make itself useful in providing them with a source of electricity to have light inside when they want it, without the danger of using candles.

When Atticus told me he had adopted three children, I hadn't realised how young they were. Sofi, the youngest, is still a baby. Lucy, the oldest and the one who has just Turned, is eleven, a year younger than my Master and Miss Guinevere, and Jason is eight. Lucy used to look after the younger two, and still seems very embarrassed that undying meant she had to let someone else look after her for a few weeks instead. 'I didn't know if Atticus would know to put cream on Sofi's bum when he changes her,' she said. 'Or if he'd know that babies can't just drink milk out of a cow, they need this special milk you got to mix out of powder. I wanted to show him, only I was too busy throwing up all the time. But he was married before, and he had a little girl then, so he knew all about babies anyway, right, Atti?'

'That's right,' said Atticus. 'Mind you, disposable nappies make it a lot easier – at least when we were staying in the hotel and had a bin to put them in. Living out here in the country, we've had to go back to doing things the old-fashioned way, boiling water from a well to wash them and drying them out on a line. And we take it in turns to get up in the day to feed and change Sofi, since Lucy wouldn't let me take over completely.'

At the moment, it's so cloudy that not even vampires mind being out and about in daylight anyway. Kuriana, on the other hand, is finding the weather very depressing. Earlier tonight, all of us – all four vampires, my Master, Professor Greenbloom, Mouse, and I – went out to visit her, and talk about the journey. She looked frustrated – she had been looking forward to flying to the Rim of Heaven, but she says she can feel in her scales that it's going to be cloudy and overcast for a long time – ten or eleven days at least, by which time the moon will be waning.

I wish we could ask Lola to fly to Pakistan and pick up a few bottles of moon-dew for the journey. But Lola isn't here – Atticus says she set off a couple of days ago, but that she didn't say anything about where she was going. He'd assumed that either she was flying back to us, or that we knew where she was planning to go next. Mouse is bitterly disappointed, as he had been looking forward to seeing her. She took a mobile phone with her, so we tried calling, but it just went straight to answerphone. But then, if she was flying, it's not as though she'd have had time to take her paws off the steering to answer the phone, so it doesn't mean there's anything wrong.

Saturday 21st November

We're saved! Early this morning, when everyone was trying to get some sleep after being up all night, there was a knock on the door, and a voice like the cracking of a very large oak tree called, 'Greenbloom? Lola told me you're here.'

Professor Greenbloom checked that none of the vampires was anywhere near the front door, then slid it open a crack. Professor Greenbloom hadn't been willing to let Atticus give up his room or his children's rooms for us, so we'd slept on mattresses in the living-room, and the front door opens straight onto it. 'Hothbrodd?' he said. 'What did you risk coming here for? Anyone could have seen you!'

'Sawdust! I can smell that there are only two humans round here – that'll be you and your son, won't it? Besides, with all the trees around this house, I'll just look like one of their own, won't I?'

I've got to admit that, with his leaf-green hair and skin like mossy bark, Hothbrodd could easily look like a tree to anyone who wasn't expecting to see a troll. At the same time, with his pointed ears, slanting green eyes and sharp-clawed hands, he looks almost as catlike as a brownie. Not in the same way, though. Brownies look like unkempt alley-cats, but Hothbrodd looks as impressive as a lion.

'It's good to see you,' said Professor Greenbloom, going out and hugging the troll around his waist, which is about as far up as a human can reach – and Professor Greenbloom is a tall human. 'How's Slatebeard?'

'Fine – not enjoying the weather much, it's even greyer than here. Now, I gather there are some people in the German mountains who need a lift to the Himalayas. I've got the plane set up for a dragon, but I can easily alter it. Who are the refugees?'

Professor Greenbloom hesitated.

'I'd guessed it was probably someone I wouldn't get on with,' growled Hothbrodd. 'It was too much to hope for woodwoses or shrub-grannies. Don't worry, I'll take them, but I need to know: are we talking ghouls, werewolves, vamp… ing succubi?' he amended hastily.

'Dwarves. About twenty-six of them, I think.'

' _Faen ta deg!_ ' [Devil take you!]

'What does that mean?' my Master asked, having woken up by now.

'It means he's not very happy about it,' I said.

'What's wrong with dwarves?' my Master asked. 'I've met some who were a bit – not very bright – but surely they're not all bad? And Twigleg and Mouse here aren't dwarves, they're homunculi,' he added hastily.

'Humph! Well, I've got nothing against homunculi, but as for dwarves, I wouldn't trust those little _jævler_ [devils] as far as I could throw them. Oh well, Greenbloom, I gave you my word, so I'm well and truly _forpulte_ [f-ed] now.'

'Excuse me, sir,' I said. 'My young Master here doesn't know any Norwegian so far, but as his teacher, I'm not sure those are the first words he should be learning.'

'Sorry. All right, _pokker!_ _Helsike!_ ' [Darn! Heck!]

'Trolls and dwarves tend not to get on very well,' Professor Greenbloom explained.

'It's not our fault! It's the mountain trolls who give them trouble, but the stupid little _fitter_ [c-s] – sorry, the stupid little _drittsekker_ [dungbags] – can't tell the difference between them and fjord trolls, or yetis…'

'Did you know there used to be yetis in Europe?' Professor Greenbloom asked. 'A couple of years ago, I found yeti bones and some of their tools in a cave in Somerset. They're fascinating people – did you know that they have a tradition that they came here from the sky, thousands of years ago? And that they encountered people who looked like humans _before_ they came to Earth?'

Hothbrodd laughed like a roaring waterfall. 'Nice try!' he said. 'You always think you can get round me by telling me something interesting. Well, if I meet any yetis on my journey, I'll ask them about it, but in the meantime, I'll have to have a word with my plane.'

As he walked away from the house, I suddenly saw what none of us had noticed before – a huge wooden aeroplane, carved with a dragon's head, which I suppose must have been the one that Hothbrodd had carried Slatebeard in. It was still big enough to carry an adult dragon, making it all the harder to believe that we hadn't spotted it, but, as Hothbrodd whispered something to it, it shrank. When Hothbrodd gestured us over to it, we could see that there were two pilots' seats (one troll-sized and one rat-sized), and then about eight rows of four seats or so. Most of them were about the right size for a dwarf – or a homunculus – but the front row consisted of one larger seat, big enough for a human, with one smaller seat alongside it.

Lola's pawprint-covered plane was clamped to the floor of the bigger plane, but Lola was sitting in the smaller pilot's seat in Hothbrodd's plane. 'You tactless idiot!' we could hear her squeaking at him, as we approached. 'If you _had_ to freak out about carrying dwarves, couldn't you at least manage to do it _quietly_? You've probably woken the whole of Ireland by now!'

'And you squealing like a very small banshee hasn't? Not to mention insisting on playing the same John Williams music over and over again on the way here?'

'I did not! It was a compilation CD with music from _Star Wars_ , _Jaws_ , _Close Encounters of the Third Kind_ , _Superman_ , _E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial_ , _Raiders of the Lost Ark_ , _Home Alone_ , _Hook_ , _Jurassic Park_ , _Schindler's List_ , _Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone_ …'

'Well, it sounded like the same one to me,' retorted Hothbrodd.

'We're very glad you've come,' said Professor Greenbloom. 'It's lucky that…'

'Luck? Luck had nothing to do with it!' squeaked Lola. 'I could smell _days_ ago that the weather wasn't going to brighten up and there was no way Kuriana would have the chance to fly out. So I went and fetched Hothbrodd and told him you'd need some help…'

'But just didn't mention the dwarves,' Hothbrodd concluded.

'Well, maybe you need to prove to them that they're wrong in thinking all trolls are stupid, prejudiced louts who swear a lot,' suggested Lola with a snigger. 'Just be your usual charming self.'

'How about some trolls being highly intelligent skilled craftsmen who have every _reason_ to swear a lot when they're expected to carry a bunch of _jævla_ dwarves?'

'Would it help if I talked to the dwarves first?' asked my Master. 'I've met Gravelbeard's brothers before: Stonebeard, Leadengleam, and Graniteface. I could tell them about the Rim of Heaven, and how many beautiful stones Gravelbeard found there, and how he's working to free the dragons who were turned to stone.'

Professor Greenbloom and I looked anxiously at each other, and then thought about it, and remembered: he's faced much worse things than a few dwarves. And he's good at being diplomatic, because he's so friendly and trusting that we want to become trustworthy for his sake. And even if he is only twelve years old, he's no ordinary boy.

More or less in unison, everyone said, 'What a good idea!'

So we're leaving in a few minutes. Lola and my Master and Hothbrodd are looking over the map at the moment. The plane overheard us talking, and, although Professor Greenbloom never actually said, 'Wouldn't it be safer if I came along with you?' it decided to expand the front row to two human-sized seats, with one homunculus-size seat in between them, and another in the cockpit next to Lola's seat. We're leaving now.


	32. Chapter 32

Sunday 22nd November

We flew by daylight for a change, yesterday, and landed in the mountains by early evening. It's hard to get used to the idea that aeroplanes, unlike dragons, _can_ fly by day – and that aeroplanes made of stealth birch can fly undetected. Hothbrodd says I shouldn't call it a stealth plane, because stealth planes are a different species of tree, with even greater powers of camouflage. They can even walk around cities disguised as humans, either as businessmen in grey suits or young people in grey and white patterned jackets, scattering leaflets urging people not to chop down trees.

Still, this plane made of stealth birch brought us to the mountains by evening, and kept us warm when we tilted the seats back far enough to sleep. I climbed out of my seat and snuggled up to sleep in the crook of my Master's arm, but Mouse, who had spent the journey sitting in the cockpit and looking at the map with Lola, didn't want to join us. He was still wide awake, and talked with Lola late into the night, until Hothbrodd told them to shut up and let him sleep. (I'd managed to drop off by them, but was woken by Hothbrodd telling Mouse and Lola off for making too much noise.)

In the morning, my Master and I woke early, and went out to explore. I really, really hate mountain heights, but my Master was so obviously excited to be there again that I was glad for his sake, and just hoped he wouldn't decide to try and climb down a cliff or something. It's strange how he seems more at home here than I do, even though I was created in this region and have lived here nearly all my life, even if I wasn't allowed outside very often. Even so, the wonderful smell of pine trees – very different from the soft, leaf-mould smell of English woodland – was delicious. Even my Master could sense it, and humans can usually only detect the strongest smells.

Before we had gone very far, I smelled dwarves, and then we saw them – two dwarves I hadn't met before, one of whom smelled very strongly of fairy-dust. They were wearing miners' overalls and huge floppy hats, like Gravelbeard and his brothers.

'It could be him,' said one of them doubtfully in Dwarven, pointing up at me.

'Yeah?' yawned the one with fairy dust around his nostrils. 'Thought you said it'd be a dragon or summat.'

'Yeah, well, a homunculus is better than nothing,' retorted the first dwarf. 'They can foretell the future, some of them. That'd be more useful than a dragon, any day.' He switched to speaking Universal, and called up to my Master, 'Excuse me, is that your homunculus?'

'He's my friend,' said my Master.

'Got a licence for him, have you?'

' _What?_ ' exclaimed my Master.

('They're trying to trick you,' I whispered in German. 'They want to take me because they think I can foretell the future.')

'Got any proof of purchase?' the dwarf asked.

'No, of course not!' said my Master indignantly. 'He's my friend, not my slave! We just met in Egypt and decided to stay together.'

'Oh, dear – stealing by finding, is it?' the dwarf said. 'We-ell, maybe it's not your fault. Maybe you just didn't know the law on enchanted beings, right? Tell you what, why don't you let us examine him? If there's no owner's mark on him, it could be he's defective and his creator rejected him, in which case you can keep him. Otherwise, we'll look after him until the owner comes to claim him.'

'You've got no right to take him!' said my Master. 'It's up to him to choose where he wants to live! You tell them, Twigleg!'

My Master hadn't noticed, but I had spotted several more dwarves creeping up on us from all directions, and they were now all hiding behind various trees or rocks. Unlike the two we had been speaking to, the newcomers were all dressed in full armour, and armed either with battle-axes, bows and arrows, or rock-hard combat bread: ciabatterers that could smash a human's kneecaps or crush my whole body, and throwing croissants which could knock a human unconscious, glance off his skull and return to the hand of the thrower. If we screamed for help now, we could be dead before Hothbrodd, Barnabas and Lola were even awake – but even if our friends managed to frighten off our attackers and rescue us, it would be hard to convince the dwarves that we were here to help them. I hoped I could keep talking long enough to delay any bloodshed.

'Honourable dwarves, you are entirely right that this good human did not know what he was doing in harbouring a fugitive,' I said. 'The alchemist Petrosius Henbane created me to serve his deadliest invention, the Gold Lord, the great cyborg-dragon Nettlebrand, denizen of that castle over there.'

('Sleazy, do you think…?' began the fairy-dust encrusted dwarf, who had seemed to be falling asleep up to that point.

' _Yes_ , Gouchy – unlike you, I _can_ think!' snapped Sleazy. 'And right now, I think you should shut up and let me do the talking!')

'When this human and his friends, a silver dragon and a forest brownie, came to these moutains last summer, the Gold Lord sent me as a spy to follow them,' I continued. 'I hid in the human's baggage, and, when he discovered me, I tricked him into letting me continue to travel with him. He was kind to me – as he is a kind friend to _all_ creatures, whether homunculi, dragons, brownies, or dwarves – and when I realised that the Gold Lord intended to kill him, I renounced my allegiance to the Master I had been created to serve, and decided that this human should be my Master instead. This was my decision, and none of his doing.'

I wondered where to go next with this story. ('There _was_ a dragon here!' whispered Gouchy in Dwarven. 'I told you! Typical Stonebeard, not telling all the rest of us, so he gets exclusive use of the dragon! Ask him where the dragon is now!'

'Where d'you think? That thing in the castle would've ate it, of course!' retorted Sleazy. 'Stuff the dragon – what about poor old Gravelbeard? What happened to _him?_ ')

'What are they talking about?' my Master asked.

I wondered what to say. I didn't like Gouchy and Sleazy in the least, and I wondered whether to keep them in suspense about their friend for a bit longer, or hit them with the truth. I longed to tell them how Gravelbeard, the moment he set eyes on Firedrake, had run off to tell Nettlebrand all about him, and how it was thanks to him that Nettlebrand had forced me to spy on Firedrake and his companions and find out where they were heading. I wanted to point out that, whereas I had been brainwashed to believe that the sole rationale for my existence was to serve Nettlebrand, but that I had still managed to break free of his control in the end, Gravelbeard had handed himself into the monster's service out of pure greed, just because he was stupid enough to believe that Nettlebrand would give one of his scales as a reward. I remembered that Gouchy and Sleazy were the friends of Gravelbeard whom Pete had mentioned, the ones who helped him brew armour-polish for Nettlebrand, and I wanted to ask how much they had known, or even wondered, about who their mysterious customer had been.

But at this point the dwarves who were surrounding us all came out into the open. 'So!' said one of them, speaking in Universal to ensure that my Master and I knew what was going on. 'Not just skiving off again, but doing it on a day when we've got important visitors, too? And not even having the common courtesy to dress smartly for them?

'Sorry, Hangry,' mumbled Gouchy and Sleazy.

' _And_ trying to enslave a homunculus,' Hangry continued. 'If you'd succeeded, would you have been able to explain to Martial why you thought that was all right? Or, for that matter, to Mercer?'

Two dwarves stepped forward. One was a thin, scarred dwarf who probably weighed barely more than I did, if you removed his imposing armour. He had a bad limp, and walked with a stick that I suspected was probably a swordstick. The second looked similar to him, but much fatter, and wore a black human-style three-piece suit rather than armour, with a black shirt and a black tie.

'Well?' said the thin dwarf. 'Can you explain why you chose today not only to shame your family in front of Goldmont Fastness, but dwarfkind in front of the sapient races of the world, by trying to enslave someone?'

'Well, it's not like a homunculus is a proper person, exactly,' mumbled Gouchy. 'It's just, well, a created being, like…'

The fat, black-clad dwarf glanced at a group of a dozen red-eyed dwarves standing around him and his companion like an honour guard. 'Like?' he repeated, fitting more threat into that single word than most people could manage in a whole report on climate change.

'No,' Sleazy said wretchedly. 'We haven't got a reason. Sorry, Mercer. Sorry, Martial.'

'How about apologising to the homunculus?' suggested the thin dwarf. 'Have you even asked him his name?'

'Uh…' said Sleazy.

'I do apologise for my compatriots,' said the thin dwarf. 'I'm Martial, at your service, and you two are welcome if you come in peace.'

'We do, definitely,' said my Master, kneeling down (while holding me in place with one hand) so that he could speak to the dwarves more easily. 'I'm Ben, and…' he hesitated, wondering which name to introduce me by.

'I'm Fliegenbein, also called Twigleg,' I explained.

'Pleased to meet you,' said Martial. 'And this is my brother Mercer. He was kidnapped as a baby and brought up by humans, but he found his way back to us in the end, didn't you?'

Mercer, the fat dwarf in the black suit, stood back. 'You handle the social stuff, bro,' he muttered. 'I'm better with an abacus than with people, you know that.'

'Mercer is the finest accountant in the mountains, of any species,' said Martial. 'And these,' – he indicated a dozen dwarves standing together – 'are Glod.'

The Glods looked almost identical, except that some were old and grey-bearded while others were younger, and that they plaited their beards in slightly different styles. In general, they looked similar to most mountain dwarves, except that they had red eyes. Like Nettlebrand and his ravens, or Mouse the clay soldier, or me. Like all enchanted creatures, in fact…

'Then – that rumour about the dyslexic alchemist who found a formula to turn lead into Glod – was actually true?' I asked.

'They're none the worse for that,' said Mercer sharply. 'They're good people. Glod here is the finest horn-player you've ever heard, and Glod invented a safety-lamp for working down mines. The only one you have to watch out for is Glod.'

'Mercer rescued us from our creator,' said one of the younger Glods worshipfully.

My Master, kneeling on the ground to talk to the dwarves, leaned forward, impressed. 'Cool!' he said. 'Did you have to break into the alchemist's lair? Did he capture you and tie you up? Did you have to jump up and head-butt him to knock him down, then kick him to death with your bare feet, and pull his keys off his belt with your teeth?'

'Uh, not exactly,' said Mercer, embarrassed. 'He was running into financial difficulties, so he called me in to sort out his accounts. I saved him from going to a debtors' prison, but my contract claimed as my price all the Glod he possessed, and all his Glod-making equipment. Tragic, really,' he added, with a grin like a very smug shark. 'If he'd only learned to read, he might have found out how to turn a deal into gold. So work hard at your lessons, boy!'

'I don't want to be rich anyway,' my Master said.

'Maybe not,' replied Mercer. 'But if you don't get an education, you'll be at the mercy of those who care about nothing else.'

'These are Urim and his brother Thummim,' said Martial, indicating two important-looking dwarves with brightly-coloured gems set into their breastplates. 'They're the judges of our tribe, and excellent soothsayers.'

'I'm afraid I can't say anything very soothing about what's going to happen,' muttered Urim. 'It's all the fault of the humans, as usual.'

'But not this human,' said Thummim. 'He's all right.'

'Theremin, and his brother Terrapin,' continued Martial. Theremin spread out his hands in a gesture of welcome, and the word 'Greetings!' sounded in our ears. It was an eerie sound, quite unlike any dwarven voice, or the sound that might have come out of any creature's larynx. It was more like a sort of audible sign language, and I realised that Theremin must be mute, and that his armour acted as a voice-synthesiser. Terrapin, who was clad in plate armour from head to toe, rather than chain-mail like most of the others, lifted the visor of his helmet long enough to snap, 'Likewise!' and shut it again.

'Hangry, and his brothers Dreamy, Sleazy, Slouchy, Snory, Dozy, and Gouchy,' went on Martial. Hangry and four of his brothers were dressed in rather rusty armour and helmets that weren't quite on straight, but they glared at Gouchy and Sleazy to reproach them for not having bothered to put on armour at all.

'And these are…' Martial was about to finish, but my Master had recognised the last group. 'Stonebeard!' he cried delightedly. 'And Graniteface, and – uh – Leadengleam, wasn't it?'

The three dwarves looked up at him. 'You again!' said Stonebeard. 'You were here just before our brother Gravelbeard went missing. You don't have any idea where he could be, do you?'


	33. Chapter 33

It would have been one thing to want to humiliate Gravelbeard in front of Gouchy and Sleazy, but I could see the anxiety in the eyes of Gravelbeard's brothers. They hadn't seen him for over six months, and for all they knew, it was all too likely that he had been killed by whatever evil thing had been lurking in the castle. I thought how I would feel if my Master had been missing without trace for that long. Besides, I wouldn't want people raking over my past, so what's the point in going on about someone else's?

'He's very well,' I said. 'He helped defeat the monster who used to live in the castle over there,' (I didn't point out that this wasn't what Gravelbeard had intended to do) 'and he's got a new job, in a cave in the Himalayas, rescuing the dragons who are frozen into stone over there. It's a safe area for dragons, out of reach of humans, but it's becoming rather crowded with refugee dragons moving in from Europe, so they were wondering whether you could come and help dig out some more caves for them to live in. It's rich in precious stones, so you'll be well paid. If you'd all like to come, and any more dwarves who might be living in this area, there's more than enough work – and treasure – for everyone.'

'That's all very well,' said Stonebeard, 'but there's something more, isn't there? Urim told me there was bad news coming, as well as good.'

'It could be something _else_ come to the mountains,' said Gouchy to Sleazy, dropping back into Dwarven again. 'Something _big_ , to make our scalps prickle that much.'

'Nah, I told you, it's just the homunculus.'

'Come off it! I know _that_ prickle – it's like the one I get off the ravens, or even off the Glod Squad. No, this ain't a small-enchanted-being prickle, this is a massive-mythological-creature prickle – look, let's just _ask_ them, okay?'

'Young man?' said Sleazy, in Universal. 'We were just wondering whether you've come with a dragon again?'

'No, not this time. A dragon friend of mine wanted to come, but it was so cloudy that she couldn't see the moon, so Hothbrodd brought us in his plane.'

'And what's Hothbrodd?' Sleazy asked.

'Well, he's a fjord-troll, and…' my Master could have completed the sentence with something like, 'he might seem a bit crusty, but his bark is worse than his bite,' but he didn't have a chance to, because by this time Gouchy and Sleazy had panicked and fled. They weren't paying much attention to where they were going, or at least, I _think_ it was just bad luck that they ran straight in the direction of Hothbrodd's plane. I heard a couple of thumps, then silence.

'You idiots!' yelled Hangry. 'You didn't realise he was a troll's spy? _None_ of you? You two so-called prophets – though you're nothing but a loss, if you ask me! You, Mercer, when you know what humans are capable of? You, Martial, when you led our attacks against trolls for years – when you lost the use of your leg to a troll?'

'And Mercer and I created the peace deal that has enabled dwarves and trolls to live side-by-side for the past forty years,' replied Martial calmly. 'I'm glad my military achievements showed the trolls that they don't _want_ to go on fighting us, but I'm a lot prouder that as a diplomat, I showed them that they don't have to. I just wish it was as easy to convince dwarves.'

At this point, Hothbrodd came over to join us, carrying a stunned troll in each hand. 'Are these yours?' he asked, bending to deposit Sleazy and Gouchy on the ground. 'When they wake up, you might want to tell them it's a good idea to look where they're going, if they don't intend to head-butt aeroplanes.'

'Glod, can you check them over?' called Martial.

One of the Glods inspected the two unconscious dwarves, checking their pulses and their breathing, and prising up their eyelids to see how their eyes responded to light, and rolled each of them over onto their sides, with their arms and legs arranged as though they were running. 'I think Sleazy'll be all right,' he said. 'Not sure about Gouchy, though – a bang on the head on top of stuffing your nostrils with fairy dust is bad news. They'll both need plenty of rest and quiet for a week or so, at any rate – it's best if I take them to the medi-cave, away from the bit we're digging now. Glod, could you start brewing some willow tea?'

'There's no time for all that!' growled Hothbrodd. 'We've got medical supplies on board, and I can extend a couple of the seats into beds if your friends need to lie down, but if they stay here they'll be exposed to a lot more noise than a few dwarves tapping away with pickaxes! Humans are building a road! They're coming to blast a tunnel through the mountain, right where your fastness is! Didn't you listen to _anything_ the ravens told you?'

'Ravens?' snorted Hangry. 'The last dwarf who chatted to a raven was Gravelbeard, and look what happened to him!'

'Yes – according to these people, he's living in a cave a long way from any human settlements, and is also becoming extremely rich,' said Martial.

'And you believe a human? When it's humans who are supposed to be the threat?'

'I believe a human who can win the trust of creatures as different as a fjord-troll, a homunculus, a dragon, and even a brownie,' said Martial.

Not to mention the vampires, I thought, and therefore didn't.

'And you trust a _troll?_ ' continued Hangry.

'Look at me,' said Hothbrodd. 'Do I look like any troll you've ever seen?'

'No – well, trolls in daytime don't normally look like anything, do they?' protested Hangry. 'Just like big piles of rocks, until the sun goes down and they wake up.'

'And here I am, walking around in broad daylight. And do I _smell_ like any troll you've ever smelt?'

Hangry sniffed – though Hothbrodd's scent, an odd mixture of herrings and pine-resin, is quite hard not to notice.

'Well, no – but then, I've never known a troll to smell of anything. Not to us, anyway.'

'Exactly. Mountain trolls are made of rock, so they don't smell of anything to dwarves or humans, any more than they can smell you. And how many trolls do you know who can build aeroplanes? Or fly aeroplanes, for that matter?'

'Uh – none,' Hangry admitted.

'Right. Because I'm a fjord-troll. You'd better get it into your head that most of what you know about mountain trolls doesn't apply to me any more than it applies to moomins. Different species, you see. And as for humans – well, I'm not keen on them myself, but what applies to humans in general doesn't apply to Barnabas Greenbloom, nor to his son here.'

'Exactly!' I said. 'I didn't think I liked rats, until…'

'It depends how you cook them,' interrupted Hangry. 'There's this traditional sauce we make around here…'

'Or slowly simmered with vegetables,' put in Mercer. 'Did you know humans don't even use rat-meat in their version? They don't use _any_ kind of meat, in fact, but they still _call_ it ratatouille.'

'No, no, roasted whole on a ratisserie,' argued one of the Glods.

'That's ENOUGH!' roared Hothbrodd. 'You're none of you getting a ride unless you promise not to eat my co-pilot.'

'Yeah, yeah, course we…' everyone murmured, until they realised the implications of this. 'Wait, your co-pilot is a _rat?_ ' asked Hangry.

'Well worked out! And she's also the navigator. Of course, even if you promise not to eat her, she might not be happy about transporting a plane-load of dwarves who might've eaten any number of her relatives, but I can go and ask her if she's willing to be magnanimous…'

'Yes! Yes, please ask her! Tell her we'll do anything! We'll all go vegetarian for life, if she wants!'

Hothbrodd turned and went back to the plane, while my Master and I waited to watch what happened. Somehow, as soon as Hothbrodd had suggested that they might not be _allowed_ to fly to the Himalayas, all the dwarves were convinced that this was, absolutely, the one thing that they wanted most in the world to do. A couple of hours later, Hothbrodd came back with Professor Greenbloom, Lola, and Mouse. By then, Gouchy and Sleazy had woken up, still looking woozy and distinctly unwell even after one of the Glods had fed them a pain-relieving potion, and everyone else had rushed around and packed up all the mining tools they could find, ready to load them onto the plane if their rescuers were still willing to take them.

'Hothbrodd tells me you've ever-so-generously agreed not to eat me if we agree to take you to the Himalayas,' said Lola in the sternest voice she could manage.

'Yes! Yes! We're sorry! We didn't know it was wrong to eat rats! We didn't even know rats could talk!'

'It's fine, I understand,' said Lola. 'Rats are omnivores, after all. Everyone eats us, and we eat everything. I've got a brother who's a fisher-rat, a sister who's a mussel-diver, a first cousin who runs a cockroach-extermination business – and there was even a family rumour that my Great-Great-Granny fed my Great-Granddad and his brothers and sisters on a dwarf, one winter when food was very hard to come by.' There was a shocked intake of breath, and Lola went on, 'But, like I said, it's only a rumour, and even if it's true, I don't think they actually _murdered_ him – in the version I heard, it sounds as if he'd frozen to death and they just didn't want to turn up their snouts at a good meal, right?

'But anyway,' Lola went on, 'Hothbrodd has been reminding me that my species have caused nearly as many extinctions as humans, what with travelling to distant islands and finding eggs from birds who've never learnt not to nest on the ground. So I'm not going to be all superior about who you might've eaten in the past, only – well, for your safety and mine, we'll keep the cockpit locked during the flight. Deal?'

'Deal!' everyone said hastily, and Hothbrodd knelt down with Lola sitting on his huge hand, so that Martial could shake Lola's paw. After that, Hothbrodd lifted Lola back onto Barnabas's shoulder, by which time all the dwarves were firmly convinced that Hothbrodd was by far the less intimidating of the two pilots. They even allowed him to pick up Gouchy in one hand and Sleazy in the other, to carry them to the plane, as the medi-Glod was afraid that they might fall over and injure themselves.

And now, they're all off on their journey. Mouse has gone with them, as he shares Lola's enthusiasm for adventure more than I ever could. The rest of us are on our way home. I climbed into my Master's jacket pocket (just in case any passers-by spotted us), and he and Professor Greenbloom walked down from the mountains to the nearest bus stop, caught a bus to the nearest train station, and trains back across Germany and Holland to the ferry terminal. We're sleeping on the ferry tonight, and by morning it should be at Harwich, after which we'll catch the train to London, and then more trains to get us home. It would have been quicker to go to somewhere where we could catch a human-built plane home, but Professor Greenbloom says they use up huge amounts of fuel oil, unlike Hothbrodd's plane which is designed to be able to run on either leaves, seawater, or sand.

As the journey was going to take such a long time anyway, I didn't like to suggest visiting the alchemist's castle. I'm afraid to go back there, and yet I wish I had dared suggest it. After all, the books in the library deserve a proper home, in a dry room. Not that I haven't got plenty to read, both in modern books and on the internet, but the alchemist's old books were all that kept me sane in the dark centuries, and I ought to do something for them. Maybe we can go back another time.

I've probably been brooding too much on the past, because of going back to the place I came from. While we were on the bus coming down from the mountains, I was almost convinced I saw a homunculus-sized head in the branches of a tree we passed, with a flash of bright red hair. But when I thought about it, I realised I must just have been looking at my own reflection.

Anyway, we're going home, and this diary is nearly full. I'll have to start another one when we get home. I love writing that word. Home.


	34. Epilogue

_[Editor's note: the next volume of Twigleg's diary, which presumably detailed the events of December 2015, is missing – perhaps because it contained such important information that he and the Greenblooms took it with them when they moved house. However, this piece of writing, on the plain side of a piece of wrapping-paper, was found along with the first two volumes of his diary in the basement.]_

Thursday 31st December 2015

So now, after spending Christmas in Ireland with vampires, we're spending New Year with dragons – not in Pakistan, as we'd expected, but in Norway. Firedrake and Maia set off nearly two weeks ago, as soon as the December moon started waxing, but the best they'd hoped for was to be in Norway by the waning of the January moon at the beginning of February, in order to celebrate Chinese New Year with Slatebeard on February 8th. It's about to go from the year of the Yin Wood Sheep to the Yang Fire Monkey. My real birth date (as opposed to the ones Nettlebrand constantly revised to make our creation earlier and earlier) was in the Year of the Rabbit, which Sorrel thought was hilariously appropriate until I worked out that 1922, when she was born, was the Year of the Dog. Then she just sulked. My Master was born in January 2003, just about managing to be still in the Year of the Horse rather than the Year of the Sheep, which wouldn't suit him at all. Firedrake was hatched in 1820, and Maia in 1808. Dragons normally lay clutches of eggs to hatch in the Year of the Dragon, though Maia says that this time round, with all the petrified dragons waking up and meeting the new ones who've arrived from Scotland, it doesn't look as though people are planning to wait until 2024 to start building nests.

At any rate, Firedrake and Maia flew faster than they had expected, even before they had arrived at Zubeida's village to ask her for some moon-dew, and managed to arrive in time to be with Slatebeard for Hogmanay. Firedrake says he thinks his stamina must have improved a lot with exercise. On the first flight from Scotland to the Himalayas, his wing-muscles ached because he just wasn't used to having the opportunity to fly far in one night – there was too much risk of being seen.

There's deep snow here, and the artificial cave Hothbrodd built for Slatebeard isn't big enough to shelter more than one dragon. Firedrake suggested to Sorrel that she might want to share with Slatebeard, while he and Maia curled up in the snow together to keep each other warm. Sorrel said indignantly that Firedrake was her dragon, and nothing was going to part her from him. Slatebeard whispered something to her which made her fur stand on end, and then she agreed that on second thoughts, maybe she would sleep in Slatebeard's cave after all. And Hothbrodd showed us that he had also built a small cabin just big enough for four humans and a homunculus to sleep in, when we aren't with the dragons.

My Master says this has been the best Christmas he's ever had. The orphanage did its best, he said, even getting members of staff to dress up as St Nicholas and his scary helper the Krampus to bring sweets on 6th December, and making everyone write letters to the Christ Child (who, confusingly, isn't Jesus, but is apparently a girl with blond curly hair, a crown, and golden wings) saying what they wanted for Christmas. But everyone knew that whatever they wrote, everyone would get the same random assortment of presents; and none of the children were allowed to _do_ anything like lighting the advent wreath or helping to bake biscuits or learning poems to recite to St Nicholas, the way their school-friends who had families of their own did. There were just too many of them, or the orphanage was worried in case anyone got burnt lighting the candles or if they fought over whose turn it was, or – whatever.

The Professor and Professora and Miss Guinevere talked about the different countries they'd lived in or visited over the years, with different Christmas traditions, and different Christmases: countries where Christmas is on the 6th or 7th of January instead of in December, or countries where Christmas doesn't happen at all but other celebrations do, like Chinese New Year, and the Hungry Ghost Festival.

From my point of view, this has been the first year in my life that included celebrations, or indeed anything except trying to survive somehow. I told Firedrake and Maia about how Atticus's adopted son Jason, who is eight, struck up a friendship with a neighbour's children his own age, and has decided that he wants to live as a human at least until he un-dies, and go to school, and to church. Atticus has managed to get used to this, even the 'going to church' bit as long as his friend Bridget's parents take him there, but at Christmas, Jason wanted everyone to come along. He was in a play, playing one of the shepherds who came to see the baby Jesus, and he'd volunteered Sofi to play Jesus before going home to ask Atticus whether this was all right.

Atticus had phoned us to discuss what to do about it, and we decided it was simpler to go along with the plan than to try and find the priest and say, 'Actually, that would be inappropriate because we're vampires,' and after all, it's not as if Jason or Sofi look like vampires yet. More importantly, because Lucy, Jason and Sofi hadn't had any kind of religious upbringing, they hadn't been brought up to be afraid of the church, and Atticus is determined that they're not going to be. Some things, like silver, garlic, sunlight, fire and so on, simply _are_ painful or harmful to vampires, but most of the others are learnt fears, in the same way that humans are taught to be afraid of snakes or spiders. All the same, Atticus was uneasy about coming to watch the play, so I'm glad that we could be with him to give him some moral support.

After that, we kept the rest of the festivities at home secular, decorating a Christmas tree with paper bats, singing 'Rudolf the Red-Fanged Vampire', watching _The Nightmare Before Christmas_ on DVD, and feasting on either fallow-deer blood, roast venison, or chickpea-and-cider casserole, depending on species and personal preference. We'd brought presents: games of Monopoly and Mah-Jongg, and a book, _The Hogfather_ by Terry Pratchett, which Atticus read aloud to all of us.

And now, Firedrake, Maia and Sorrel have come bringing presents: but not presents from them. 'Those stupid dwarves you sent over made me fill half my rucksack with their stupid rubbish!' Sorrel announced as soon as we arrived. 'They said it was supposed to be a present for you, to thank you for rescuing them. I didn't have anywhere near enough space for provisions for the journey, _and_ I needed to make room for bottles of moon-dew for the dragons, too!'

She reached into her bag and dug out a box labelled, 'For the grey-haired human with glass on his eyes, and the black-haired boy who is friends with a homunculus'.

'They could have said it was for you, too!' my Master said to me indignantly. 'And what about Hothbrodd, and Lola?'

'Well, if we open it, we can always share whatever's inside, if it's something they're likely to want as well,' said Professor Greenbloom.

My Master untied the many pieces of cord that bound the box, and opened the lid to reveal two notes, one written in German and the other in Dwarven runes. The one in runes was addressed to me, and read:

 _Dear homunculus,_

 _I never got round to saying it before, but I'm sorry about talking to Nettlebrand and everything. I didn't know what I was getting myself into, but if what I had to go through was anything like what you'd been living through for hundreds of years, I don't know how you got through it alive and more-or-less sane. I'd have gone to pieces if it'd gone on much longer._

 _I'm glad you managed to melt Nettlebrand in the end, even if it did involve stealing my hat, tying me up and then lying to me. Thanks for not telling the other dwarves about what happened. I told Stonebeard, but he promised he won't tell the others._

 _Yours,_

 _Gravelbeard Greedysson_

The one in German read:

 _Most honourable humans,_

 _By my calculation, we owe you at least this much:_

 _Warning us of the impending destruction of our fastness: one sapphire._

 _Organising transport to a place of safety: two rubies._

 _Leading us to the richest jewel-mine we've ever encountered: seven diamonds._

 _Yours sincerely,_

 _Mercer Docsson_

Professor Greenbloom stared at the note, then at the glittering, polished stones underneath it. He looked startled, confused, and then horrified. 'B-but – I didn't do it for a _reward!_ ' he exclaimed. I was just trying to save their lives, that's all! And Ben's right – it wasn't just us, it was Twigleg and Hothbrodd and Lola – especially Hothbrodd. He was the one who built the plane, and he and Lola were the ones who flew it to the Himalayas and back! And it was Twigleg who risked his freedom to keep those first two dwarves talking until we could explain the situation, instead of panicking and getting us into a fight. Why should we be the ones to get paid?'

Hothbrodd came over to see what was going on, and Professor Greenbloom showed him the note. Hothbrodd shrugged. 'As far as I'm concerned, you're welcome to them,' he said. 'Diamonds can make decent cutting tools, but you want little ones for that, not socking great rocks like those. No, I reckon the dwarves gave you those because they like shiny things, and they know humans like shiny things, and if you ever have to trade with griffins, _they_ might like shiny things, but they're bugger all use to any other species.'

'But – but I don't _want_ to be rich!' protested the Professor. 'I've never wanted to be rich.'

'No,' said the Professora, 'but we _have_ often wished we could do more for fantastic beings, haven't we? Mercer and his friends, and Firedrake and _his_ friends, and Twigleg here, aren't the only fantastic beings who need protection, are they? We could sell these and donate the money to a crypto-conservation charity – maybe help fund Zubeida's research, or that refuge for fantastic beings that Bağdagül runs in Turkey – or we could leave our jobs and set up something similar ourselves.'

'We…' the Professor looked tempted, but then shook his head. 'We couldn't do it in England. Not without people noticing. Ireland might be a bit less crowded, but even so…'

'Why either of them?' interrupted Hothbrodd. 'What's wrong with _here?_ '

Nobody could think of anything that was wrong with _here_ (except Sorrel pointing out that it was knee-deep in snow). Hothbrodd lives in a forest by a fjord in one of the remotest parts of Norway. There's plenty of space for land animals, water for kelpies and selkies to swim in, skies undisturbed enough that nobody would notice dragons or pegasi flying around – and a troll who's actually willing, actually _offering_ , to share his territory with us.

'So, if we built a house here, Firedrake could come and visit us whenever he wanted?' said my Master.

'We could come back when the snow's melted, and stock up on mushrooms!' said Sorrel. 'Burr-Burr-Chan's offered to teach me how to grow them – I totally need to bring back some spores of chanterelles, and horn-of-plenty, and hen-of-the-woods, and honey fungus, and wood ears, and terracotta hedgehogs, and puffballs, and…' (etc., etc., long after everyone else had stopped listening).

'If we lived here, we couldn't go to school, could we?' said Miss Guinevere thoughtfully. 'We'd need to do lessons at home, the way Ben's been doing this term.'

'Would you like that?' Professor Greenbloom asked both the children. 'Or would you rather go on with the lives you're living now?'

'I'd want to be somewhere I can see Firedrake,' said my Master firmly.

'I'd miss my friends at school,' said Miss Guinevere. 'But – well, how many people get the chance to live with mermaids and kelpies?'

'What about you?' my Master asked me. 'Would you mind going on being my teacher? Our teacher? And living here?'

'Why _would_ I?' I said. 'All I've ever wanted is to be with you, but – well, now that nobody's _forcing_ me to work, I want to be useful. I'm getting the hang of computers, and if Professor Greenbloom could lend me his notebooks, I could transcribe the information into a proper database.'

'I'd be very grateful if you would,' said the Professor. 'I've known for years that I ought to get round to it, but – well, I'm not good with technology.'

I think we're all agreed. We need to go home and sort out the details, but then, soon, we'll be coming home again – when _this_ place is our new home. We need to ask the brownies and the fairies, and the Tree People and the Grass People for that matter, if they want to come with us. Mouse seems happy travelling with Lola these days, but we need to discuss this with him – and with Johannes and Professor Spotiswode, when they want to take a break from travelling the world in search of Wights and Hollows.

And there's been one more piece of good news. There isn't much mobile phone reception here, but earlier my Master's phone flickered into life to reveal a text message:

 _Hi Ben, I've missed U. Been busy rescuing dragons – nothing like Firedrake, or Issiah for that matter! Phone when U get a chance, OK? Ivan._


End file.
